ALAPPUZHA: Foreign tourists visiting God's Own Country on e-Tourist visa on arrival (e-TVOA) is less compared other top ten Indian airports. The tourism ministry's November data on foreign tourist arrivals shows Kochi at fifth, Thiruvananthapuram eighth and Kozhikode 10th position. The e-TVOA facility was introduced at the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport in 2013 and subsequently the other two. Now the facility is available to the citizens of 161 countries, arriving at 16 airports.
There was a 58.8 percent increase in e-TVOA arrivals in the country. From January to November it was 14.57 lakh as compared to 9.17 lakh in 2016. The UK tops the chart with 17.1 percent followed by the USA with 11.6 and Russians 6.6 percent. The rest are China (4.8), Australia (4.5), Canada (4.3), South Korea (2.6), Thailand (2.4), Italy (2.4), Singapore (2.1), Oman (1.8), Spain (1.8) and Netherlands (1.5).
Their favourites airports are New Delhi (44.5), Mumbai (18.7), Dabolim (Goa) (10.1), Chennai (5.8), Kochi (5.4), Kolkata (3.6), Hyderabad (2.9), Trivandrum (2.5), Amritsar (1.3), Ahmedabad (1.2), Gaya (1.1), Jaipur (0.8), Trichy (0.5), Lucknow (0.5) and Calicut (0.3). The foreign footfalls last month was 10.05 lakh compared to 8.78 lakh in the same period in 2016 and 8.16 lakh in 2015, registering a growth of 14.4 and 7.6percent respectively over the previous year. FTAs this year were 90.01 lakh, 15.6 percent up from the same period of the last year (77.83 lakh). Industry sources say most of the tourists to Kerala come on a package tour to India. So they used to land in big cities.
