According to the findings of the World Travel & Tourism Council's (WTTC) Economic Impact Research (EIR) for 2023, the travel and tourism industry in India is making a strong comeback. It is very close to reaching its pre-pandemic high this year.
During her speech at the G20 Summit in India, Julia Simpson, President and CEO of WTTC, praised the sector's ability to adapt. She said the industry is growing twice as fast as the GDP in all G20 countries, including India.
According to the WTTC's study, the travel and tourism sector is expected to add INR 16.5 trillion to India's GDP in 2019. This is only 3.5 percent less than the sector added in 2019 before the epidemic.
Soon, 1.6 million jobs are expected to be created in India's travel and tourism industry.
According to the same source, India's travel and tourism business is expected to create about 1.6 million more jobs this year. Because of this recovery in job growth, the industry will be able to regain almost all jobs lost because of the COVID-19 epidemic. This will bring the total number of people working in the field to about 39 million.
Because of this, about one out of every 13 people currently employed in India will be working in the travel and tourism industry.
According to the research findings, the amount of money spent by tourists traveling to India from other countries will surpass two trillion Indian Rupees. In addition, it is anticipated that the spending of domestic tourists will exceed INR 12.6 trillion.
India's travel and tourism business grew a lot in the past year. Its contribution to the country's gross domestic product (GDP) increased by about 90 percent to over INR 15.6 trillion. This made up 5.9% of the whole country's economy, and before the pandemic, it was supposed to get closer to an all-time high of 7% in 2019.
Also, the business was responsible for a big chunk of the 14.6 million new jobs in 2017. This brought the total number of jobs in the field to 372 million, which means that the travel and tourism business is responsible for almost 1 in 13 jobs in India.
Regarding how much money tourists spend, the total amount spent by foreign tourists in India in 2022 will be more than INR 1.6 trillion. This is a huge increase of 125 percent.
During the same period, the amount spent by local tourists increased by 86% to more than INR 12.3 trillion. The domestic tourism market has come back strongly, as shown by the amount of money spent by domestic tourists is now only 1% less than before the epidemic.
By 2033, the global tourism authority predicts that India's travel and tourism industry will add INR 36.8 trillion to the country's GDP. This would be the same as about 7% of India's economic output.
Also, the industry is expected to provide jobs for more than 58.2 million people nationwide. Almost one out of every ten people will work in the Travel & Tourism business.
In 2022, the tourism and travel industry in the Asia-Pacific area contributed USD 1.6 trillion to the region's economy, which was a big part of that total. Even so, this number was still 50% lower than the peak reported in 2019, showing how the pandemic affected the sector's success.
The World Travel and Tourism Council predicts that the travel and tourism business will contribute over USD 2.6 trillion to the regional economy in 2023. This is only a 16 percent drop from the all-time high of USD 2.9 trillion in 2019.
In the Asia-Pacific area in 2022, the travel and tourism industry was responsible for employing more than 155 million people. Although this represented an increase of 8.7 million employments compared to the previous year, it was still 15% below the levels before the epidemic.