India Tourism to open office in China

With an eye on tapping spiritual tourism potential of China, the tourism ministry is planning to open its representative office there to showcase Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India. This was announced by tourism secretary A K Misra at a conference "Positioning India as a Hub for Buddhist Tourism" organised by FICCI at Delhi. He said the Chinese version of Incredible India website, to promote India as an attractive destination among the Chinese, will be formally launched on the visit of Chinese tourism minister on February 12. Stating that the tourism ministry plans to attract largely Buddhist South Asian tourists to Buddhist sites here, Misra observed India Tourism overseas offices in Singapore and Tokyo are already promoting Buddhist circuits in a big way.

Beijing will be 14th overseas office of India Tourism after New York, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Milan, Toronto, Dubai, London, Johannesburg, Amsterdam, Sydney, Paris, Tokyo and Singapore. All important Buddhist destinations now will be covered by the a "Bodh Parikarma Train" which is going to be launched on March 28 this year, he said. The FICCI in a five point programme presented to the government said if Buddhist tourism circuits are properly developed, number of tourists visiting India would multiply by five and earnings could be well over Rs 4500 crore. According to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) estimates, China will have biggest outbound market by 2020 with 100 million Chinese travelling out every year. Presently, this is limited to 12 million outbound travellers a year.

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