Tourism director P Bala Kiran questions top 10 stats

Thiruvananthapuram: Tourism director P Bala Kiran has questioned the India Tourism Statistics that has no place for Kerala in the top ten states visited by domestic tourists. “The domestic visitors to places like Tamil Nadu are highly inflated because it records even day visitors as tourists. We record a person as a tourist only if she stays for at least a day in the state,” tourism director P Bala Kiran said.

According to Indian Tourism Statistics, Tamil Nadu is the top draw among domestic tourists with 34.38 crore visitors in 2016. “If we include devotees to Sabarimala, our numbers would swell even more than that,” Mr Baslakiran said. Uttar Pradesh comes second with 21.17 crore domestic visitors in 2016. “Hundreds of locals visit Taj Mahal daily, and all of them are considered tourists, inflating the state's arrival figures,” he said.

The director said that there was no central principle guiding the collection of tourist arrival figures. “The Centre just puts out the figures given to them by the states,” he said. Mr Bala Kiran, however, said that foreign tourist arrival numbers reflect the true picture. If so, Tamil Nadu again is the biggest attraction, accounting for 47.21 lakh (19.1 percent) of the 2.47 crore tourists who visited the country in 2016.  Uttar Pradesh comes third, accounting for 31.57 lakh (12.8 percent) tourists. Kerala, however, comes seventh, accounting for 10.38 lakh tourists or just 4.2 percent of the total inflow of foreign tourists.