Outbound Travel from India to Become Growth Engine for Global Tourism

Outbound travel from India has turned into a growth driver for global tourism. Fast growth in the middle class and better air connectivity across the country are the main causes of the exponential rise, according to a new report by OECD.

The report narrated that the recovery pattern of the tourism sector in the Asia Pacific region had totally been different. At a time when outbound travel from China is picking up, domestic tourism is gaining, and inbound tourism runs substantially below pre-pandemic levels, thereby constraining broader economic recovery in China. Meanwhile, Indian tourists are poised to become a key growth engine for global tourism.

"The Brazil G20 Presidency and the Italy G7 Presidency have also placed human capital and skills in tourism on their 2024 workstreams, … drawing on the achievements of the India and Indonesia G20 Presidencies", the OECD report noted.

Tourism has bounced back hard around the world from big falls caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which sent tourism flows tumbling in 2020-21 after six decades of uninterrupted growth. This rebound is crucial in one sense to that of supporting growth and well-being. However, it remains uneven. Against the background of increased geopolitical tensions, cost-of-living pressures, and climatic events, this constitutes serious challenges for this sector. That proactive, forward-facing policies should drive towards a more resilient, sustainable, and inclusive tourism future is therefore imperative.

In OECD countries, in ones that have data series, the direct contribution of tourism to GDP recovered to 3.9 percent in 2022, just half a percentage below the level in 2019. "Evidence suggests that the recovery has continued since", the report added.

Full recovery would be registered at the global level by the end of 2024, driven by positive traveler and business sentiment upped travel in the Asia Pacific region. Growth would return to pre-pandemic trends once the imbalance in demand and supply gets resolved.

The report of the OECD thus corroborates the fact that Indian tourists are going to play a leading role in the global scenario of tourism, and this is a paradigm shift when the country is emerging as a powerhouse in the tourism industry.