India wins top tourist destination award

India won two prestigious awards at the World Travel Market (WTM), a four-day annual event held in London. It bagged the 'World's Leading Destination' award and the 'World's Leading Tourist Board,' prize, instituted by World Travel Awards (WTA).

Union tourism minister Subodh Kant Sahai received the awards from Graham E. Cooke, president and founder of WTA. The minister said India aimed to double the number of tourist arrivals to 10 million in about two to three years.

''Our aim is to increase India's share in international tourist arrivals from the present 0.6 per cent to one per cent (of a total of one billion travellers) by the end of 2016,'' said Sahai. ''In India, the tourism sector is going to be recognised as an infrastructure sector. We need two million hotel rooms if we are going to add five million tourists.''

The tourism infrastructure will be developed by the central and state governments on the private-public partnership model, he explained. ''We feel tourism is the only industry, which will help eradicate poverty,'' said the minister. ''A traveller to India is contributing to the upliftment of the poorest of the poor in the country. We started late in developing the tourism industry, but we are on the job to make it a success.''

According to the minister, nearly 25 million additional jobs would be generated with the doubling of tourist arrivals in India. ''We are also creating 30 to 40 tourism parks in the country to enable foreign tourists to spend more time in India,'' he added.

And to attract more foreign travellers, the government would remove visa restrictions, imposed recently, which barred tourists from coming back to India within two months of their first visit.