New Delhi: Among the top 15 countries, Bangladesh topped in Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) in India in 2023, while the United States of America and the United Kingdom stand second and third respectively, the Ministry Of Tourism said.
According to the Bureau of Immigration data which was given to ETV Bharat, around 2119826 Bangladesh tourists arrived in India in 2023 which is a 22.3 per cent share, while 1691498 from the USA (17.8 per cent) and 920591 from the UK 9.7 (per cent). Following them, Australia stands fourth with 456167 and Canada fifth with 385938 foreign tourists who arrived in India in the same year.
Notably, Bangladesh was in second position in the year 2022 with 1277557 tourists arriving in India and the USA recorded first by 1403399 in the same year, while the UK was third by 641051 tourists.
A total of 7369869 FTAs in India from the top 15 countries recorded 78.3 per cent of the share in the year 2023, while it was recorded at 5058629 in the year 2022 which was 79.7 per cent of the share.
A total number of 2151059 tourists from other countries visited India in the year 2023 which was 21.7 per cent of share, while 1303738 tourists arrived in India in the year 2022 with 20.3 per cent share, as per the data.
India received 9.24 million foreign tourists globally including countries from the Asia Pacific. Further, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Thailand and Korea (Republic of) are among the top 20 tourism source countries for India signifying the importance of the region as a source market for inbound tourism, as per the Rajya Sabha data.
The Ministry of Tourism compiles the number of domestic and foreign tourist visits to different states and Union Territories based on the information received from them. As per the previous years trends, major foreign tourists visit various states including Gujarat, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Delhi Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Kerala Punjab and Madhya Pradesh.
As previous data shows, foreign tourists also visited the most popular centrally protected ticketed monuments for foreign visitors in 2022-23, including the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, Qutub Minar Humayun Tom, Fatehpur Sikri, Sarnath, and Red Fort.
