SCOPE OF TOURISM IN INDIA (Pages 117-125) by Prof. Borase Sudhakar Jagannath*and Dr. Shelar Suresh Kautik** in THE INTERNATIONAL MANAGER / ISSN: 2348-9413 (Online); 2348-9405 (Print)

In recent years, the scope of tourism in our country has been the focus of study and research. It is the general consensus that tourism has been pivotal in social progress as well as an important vehicle of widening socio-economic and cultural contacts throughout human history. Over the past years, many developing and developed countries have considered tourism as an option for sustainable development of their nations. The importance of tourism as a contributor to economic growth is so widely accepted that year after year throughout the world a massive investment continues to pour in its development. It is with this backdrop, the present paper is to focus on what is the scope of tourism in our country and what is the relationship between tourism sector development and economic growth of India. The international tourist arrivals were 880 million and the corresponding international tourism receipts was US$ 852 million in 2009. The United Nations World Tourism Organization has predicted that the number of international arrivals will reach 1.6 billion by the year 2020, with 1.2 billion of those being intra-regional travelers and 378 million being long-haul travelers. Today tourism is the largest service industry in India, with a contribution of 6.23 per cent to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and providing 8.78 per cent of the total employment. Though the growth in tourism in India has been impressive, India’s share in global tourist arrivals and earnings is quite insignificant. India’s rank in world tourist arrivals in 2008 was 41. It is universally acknowledged that the tourism resources in the country have the potential to generate significantly higher levels of demand from the domestic and international markets, and, if exploited intelligently in a sustainable manner, can prove to be the proverbial engine of growth for the economy. Keywords: scope of tourism, economic growth, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), domestic and international markets, United Nations World Tourism Organization etc.