(TAN): Foreign tourist arrivals to India slumped over 66% year-on-year in March because of a collapse in travel demand triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
Data from the Tourism Ministry showed 3,28,462 overseas tourists arrived in the country in March, leading to a whopping 66.4% decline in traffic compared to a year ago. In March 2019, 9,78,236 international visitors had come to India.
Over a quarter of the traffic came from Bangladesh – the neighbouring nation accounted for the highest number of visitors at 26.07%, followed by the United Kingdom at 10.63%, the United States at 10.03%, the Russian Federation at 5.12% and Canada at 4.12%. Other neighbouring countries such as Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan and Myanmar accounted for 3.98%, 2.24%, 1.66% and 1.56% of the international arrivals, respectively.
Other European nations that made it to the top 15 source countries include France at 2.50% and Germany at 2.31%. From the Asia-Pacific region, Malaysia sent 3.14% of India’s total foreign arrivals, while Australia, Thailand and Singapore contributed 2.64%, 1.95% and 1.49% of the visitors, respectively.
In March 2020, total number of international visitors who arrived on e-Tourist visa dropped 64.9% to 98,918 from 2,81,765 in March 2019.
Most of these tourists entered the country through the Delhi and Mumbai airports. While Delhi Airport let 28.39% of the total foreign tourists enter India in March, Mumbai Airport saw 11.57% of these visitors.
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Foreign tourist arrivals also went down in the January-March 2020 quarter as travel restrictions were tightened across the globe – traffic plummeted 22.6% to 24,62,244 during the period from 31,79, 792 in the same period last year.
India extended its 21-day lockdown as number of cases began to rise in different parts of the country. It also suspended train and air movements in a bid to slow the spread of the virus.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, India has so far reported 37,336 cases including 1,223 deaths.
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