Bangladesh beats US, UK in visiting India; Tamil Nadu top destination

The statistics given by the ministry of India shows that Bangladesh has ranked first whose tourists visited India most in 2018 beating US and UK.

The data also highlights the consistent increase of overall foreign tourist arrivals and the earning of foreign exchange in the consecutive years in 2016, 2017 and 2018, reports Financial Express, an Indian daily.

From Bangladesh, 13,80,409 tourists arrived in 2016. The numbers saw a significant increase in 2017 as they jumped to 21,56,557. In 2018, it peaked with 22,56,675 tourists arriving in India. A sharp contrast was seen in the tourism trends from Pakistan. There, the numbers fell from 1,04,720 in 2016 to 44,266 in 2017 and a dismal 41,659 in 2018.

The arrivals were consistent from the US with 12,96,939 tourists coming to India in 2016. The number increased minimally in 2017 with an addition of 1 lakh more tourists. In 2018, another lakh of tourists entering the country increased. The UK maintained a steady flow of tourists towards India with around 9 lakh of them visiting in the year 2016-17. The numbers increased to 10,29,757 in 2018.

In 2018, Tamil Nadu saw the most visits by foreign tourists among individual states, these were over 60 lakh. Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh lagged behind with over 50 lakhs and 37 lakh visits. Delhi, in the fourth place, saw 27,40,502 tourist visits. Rajasthan in the last place saw around 17 lakh tourists visit the state.

The fee collected in the US billion dollars from per million foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) differs for the three years in focus. In 2016, 8.80 FTAs generated 22,923 billion in fees. While in 2017, 10.04 FTAs equalled to 27,310 billion dollars in fees. The year 2018, saw an all-time increase with 10.56 FTAs coinciding with 28,586 billion fees.