India's tourism boom: Sector to double to ₹42 trillion by 2035, driven mainly by domestic travel, says WTTC

Mint

2 days ago

Travel and tourism will contribute almost ₹42 trillion and about 64 million jobs to India's economy by 2035, but the country will need to invest more heavily in infrastructure and destination marketing to stay competitive and maintain the growth momentum in the sector, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) said.
The sector has bounced back, with international visitor spending touching an all-time high of ₹3.1 trillion in 2024, beating pre-pandemic levels, according to new data from the WTTC. Domestic travellers pushed the total spending within the country to ₹15.5 trillion last year, up 22% from 2019, according to the council's latest Economic Impact Research.
The report shows a significant recovery in international travel following the pandemic, which had shifted focus largely to domestic tourism.
WTTC president and CEO Julia Simpson, who's in India this week, told Mint that India has what it takes to become one of the world's most exciting travel economies—but now's the time to market it better.
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'It's important for India to tell its story to the world," Simpson said. "There is a call for spending more on marketing the country and some people are concerned there is not enough marketing spends but I'm confident that India will do that because it's very important, as a country grows its infrastructure, to start telling its stories, of new destinations that people can travel to and so on. There are destinations in India that are already very sophisticated, and people come to them, but you need to market the new ones."
She said she is confident India will invest more in infrastructure and destination marketing.
The London-based council, which represents over 200 CEOs of the world's top travel and tourism companies, said India is on track to become one of the world's most dynamic tourism economies in the next decade or so, led by domestic travellers. But it also stressed that consistent policy support and stronger global marketing will be key to sustaining that growth.
Growth momentum
It added that in total, the sector contributed almost ₹21 trillion to the country's GDP in 2024—about 6.6% of the economy—and supported a record 46.5 million jobs.
By comparison, tourism and culture minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat had told the Lok Sabha in November 2024 that tourism accounted for a combined 5% of India's GDP in 2023—2.6% through direct contributions and 2.4% through indirect impact.
The momentum is expected to continue. WTTC projects the sector's contribution will rise to over ₹22 trillion in 2025, with jobs crossing 48 million.
India hosted 20 million international visitors in 2024—an increase of 2.3 million since 2019. Business travel, too, showed signs of a revival, reaching ₹1.1 trillion last year—2.6% higher than its 2019 peak.
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Simpson said India's greatest asset right now is its robust domestic travel base.
'India has a very, very strong domestic travel market, similar to China and the US, and domestic markets are actually very important to the growth of tourism of a sector because it gives a lot of resilience to the sector. All big economies need strong domestic figures," she said.
She also pointed to the rise in high-spending Indian-origin travellers.
'It's a very significant and serious economy now and so many countries globally are now vying for Indian tourists, who also become their own brand ambassadors and bring in more travellers," she said
Simpson added that Thailand and Vietnam market themselves so well compared with other countries and India is going to do it "in its own way as it is a very significant and serious economy."
'I'm very positive about India. More people will come as the economy grows," she said.
Seamless travel
The country has also taken steps to make travel more seamless for many countries, she said, though it still trails regional peers in visibility and global promotion, also because India's international marketing budgets or the Incredible India campaign now has a negligible ₹3 crore for this fiscal year.
'But investing more on that side is worth it. It's not just about the seamlessness of it but also that it indicates to the traveller how sophisticated and innovative you are as a country," she added.
In 2023, the sector had already begun to recover, contributing ₹16.5 trillion to the country's GDP, with domestic spending at ₹12.6 trillion and international visitors contributing ₹2 trillion. Employment in the sector reached 39 million, WTTC said.
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What's changed since then is the scale. But the WTTC cautioned that the next decade won't see the same sharp spikes. International visitor spending in 2025 is projected to rise to ₹3.2 trillion—just ₹10,000 crore more than this year. Business travel, while improving, is still only inching forward.
This week, the council and its India chapter, WTTCII signed another memorandum of understanding to strengthen their ties for future collaboration and possibly host a global summit in India in the next few years.