As per the official data released US and UK markets are the major contributors to the inbound travel business for India in the year 2009. US had a share of 16 % and UK had 14.9 %.
The list of top 8 countries is USA, UK, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Canada, France, Germany and Australia. The rank of Sri Lanka has improved from 5 in 2008 to 4 in 2009 while Canada slipped from 4 to 5 in 2009.
There have been changes in the ranks of the countries from 9 to 15 also, Nepal is the new entry to the top 15 list and Republic of Korea has dropped out. Malaysia has gained in rank while Japan and Italy have lost ground.
The travel from Africa has registered a positive growth of 16% which is good news for travel operators focusing on that continent. This will continue to grow in the coming years also.
The share of US and UK regions remained almost the same compared to previous year and the increase was only marginal.
China even in spite of being a booming economy contributes very little to Indian market and their share is only a very low 1.9 %. Let us hope that with the growing strength in ties this figure will grow up and both countries will gain on the travel opportunities also.
Author: Umesh Chakravarthy
Umesh works as Senior Test Engineer in Teknokraaft and works with our OTA team.