Tourists to India - Beware.

You could lose your life, be molested, raped and attacked. And the Indian police will do little to help you or investigate the incident.

India’s police will most likely deny the incident and attempt to cover it up.

India’s tourism campaign is called Incredible India.

But the campaign might more aptly be called Incredible Murders, Incredible Rapes & Incredible Attacks.

Incredible India or Dangerous India?

A few months back, there was the case of two NRI girls being attacked in Mumbai near the J.W.Marriott Hotel.

Before that there was the case of foreigners being raped and murdered in New Delhi.

Now there is the tragic case of rape and murder of a young British girl Scarlett Keeling in Goa, which the Indian police initially tried to cover up stating that she drowned after taking drugs. It was only after the

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So what if India has a glorious 5,000-year-old history or an ancient civilization or too many pictureque spots to count.

India has one of the worst records on the planet in attracting foreign tourists to the country.

For the first 11 months of 2007, India recorded just 4.4 million foreign tourists (Source: Ministry of Tourism & Culture, Government of India).

Forget Europe or the U.S.

India’s tourist record looks pathetic when you compare it with even other Asian countries like Singapore, China, Thailand or even Vietnam.

For instance, Singapore had 4.9 million visitors in the first six months of 2007 alone. In 2006, Singapore had 9.75 million visitors while India had 4.43 million visitors last year.

Taj Mahal - A major tourist attraction in Agra, India

When you consider China, Indian tourist arrivals look positively awful. Beijing alone had 3.68 million arrivals in the first 10 months of 2007.

In 2006, China received 46.51 international tourists.

Other Asian countries are also doing better. Thailand is expected to get 14.2 million tourists this year.

Even tiny Vietnam expects 4.3 million tourist arrivals this year. Tourist arrivals in Vietnam has supposedly doubled since 2000.

Much of the blame for India’s shameful performance in attracting tourists should rightly go to India’s hopelessly incompetent tourism ministry at the Central level and the soporific tourism departments in the various states.

We bet 99% of Indians have no clue where or what Croatia is.

No big deal.

For the uninformed, Croatia is a small Southern European country on the Adriatic Sea. 

Part of Yugoslavia until 1991, Croatia has an area of just 56,542 sq km and a population of a mere 4.55 million.

Yet, as a story in today’s New York Times notes, Croatia expects 10 million tourists this year.

What was seen for much of 1990s as a war-torn nation is now widely perceived as a prime tourist destination, with 10 million tourists a year and visitors flocking to its Adriatic coast.

In contrast, India - land of the Taj Mahal, Qutub Minar, Ajanta, Ellora, Tanjore temples, Goa and countless other fabulous tourist spots - gets just about four million tourists.

According to the World Tourism Organization, Croatia got 8.47 million international tourists in 2005. In the same year, India got a piffling 3.91 million international tourists while its communist neighbor China got a whopping 46.81 million tourists. Go figure.

Surely something is very rotten when newly independent tiny countries like Croatia (126th largest country in the world) attract more tourists than India (seventh largest).

Nearly 60 years after India won independence, the country is still barely on the international tourist map.

Poor marketing, negligible investment in tourism and lack of Continue Reading…