Incredible India

India stole the limelight at the World Tourism Mart 2011 by winning two global awards—World’s Leading Destination and World’s Leading Tourist Board, Incredible India. Tourism minister Subodh Kant Sahay received the awards from Graham E Cooke, president and founder of World Travel Awards, at the Excel Exhibition Centre where he said India planned to have another five million tourists in the next 2-3 years in addition to the five million recorded this year. “We have recorded five million tourist arrivals this year and we want to add another five million within the next 2-3 years which will help create 25 million additional jobs in the country,” Sahay said. On visa restrictions on tourists, prohibiting them from revisiting the country within two months of first visit, he said, “We are going to remove this barrier.” He said, “our aim is to increase India’s share in the International Tourist Arrivals from 0.6% to 1% (of 1 billion travellers) by end of 2016.” “Tourism sector is going to be recognized as the infrastructure sector. We need two million hotel rooms if we are going to add five million tourists. The infrastructure will be developed by the central and state governments on the Private-Public Participation model,” Sahay said.