Indian tourism

Tourism in India is the largestservice industry, with a contribution of 6.23% to the national GDP and 8.78% of the total employment in India. The tourism industry in India generated about 100 billion US$ in 2008 and that is expected to increase to US$275.5 billion by 2018 at a 9.4% annual growth rate. [ 1 ] Inthe year 2010, 17.9 million foreign tourists visited India. Majority of foreign tourists come from USA and UK. Kerala , Tamil Nadu , Delhi , Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan are the top 5 states to receive inbound tourists. [ 2 ] Domestic tourism in the same year was massive at 740 million. Andhra Pradesh , Uttar Pradesh , Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra received the big share of these visitors. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] Ministry of Tourism is the nodal agency to formulate national policies and programmes for the development and promotion of tourism. In the process, the Ministry consults and collaborates with other stakeholders in the sector including various Central Ministries/agencies, the State Governments/ union Territories and the representatives of theprivate sector. Concerted efforts are being made to promote new forms of tourism such as rural, cruise, medical and eco-tourism. [ 5 ] The Ministry of Tourism is the nodalagency for the development and promotion of tourism in India and maintains the Incredible India campaign.
According to World Travel and Tourism Council , India will be a tourism hotspot from 2009–2018, [ 6 ] having the highest 10-year growth potential. [ 7 ] The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report2007 ranked tourism in India 6th in terms of price competitiveness and 39th in terms of safety and security. [ 8 ] Despite short- and medium-term setbacks, such as shortage of hotel rooms, [ 9 ] tourism revenues are expectedto surge by 42% from 2007 to 2017. [ 10 ] India's thousands of years of history, its length, diversity and the variety of geographic features make its tourism basket large and varied. It presents heritage andcultural tourism along with medical, business and sports tourism. India has one of the largest and fastest growing medical tourism sector