Tourism: Can this be the next big thing for India?

The Guest, the Host and the Next Big Thing

On a winter morning in Hampi, a boatman ferries a German backpacker across the Tungabhadra in a round coracle, a homestay owner fries dosas for a family from Pune, and a young guide explains to both of them why a stone chariot has stood among the boulders for five centuries. None of them would call this an industry, yet in that one scene lie transport, food, hospitality, heritage and wages, all set in motion by the simple act of a person choosing to travel. India has the deserts and the glaciers, the coastlines and the temples, the cuisines and the festivals that most countries can only advertise. The question is not whether India has something to show. Tourism can become the next big thing for India, but only if it is treated as an engine of jobs and inclusion built on infrastructure, safety and ecological limits, rather than as a showcase of monuments and slogans.

To call something "the next big thing" is to make a claim about scale. The next big thing in an economy is a sector that can absorb millions of workers, earn foreign exchange, pull lagging regions into growth and change how a nation sees itself, as information technology did for India in the 1990s. Tourism qualifies on paper. It is among the most labour-intensive services, it reaches places that factories and software parks never will, and it sells something that cannot be outsourced: the experience of being in a particular place. Its multiplier effect runs through hotels, transport, handicrafts, food and local guides, so that a rupee spent by a visitor travels far beyond the ticket counter.

The numbers already show a sector of weight. As per the India Tourism Data Compendium 2025 of the Ministry of Tourism, tourism accounted for 5.22 per cent of India's GDP in 2023-24 and supported 13.34 per cent of total employment, counting direct and indirect jobs together. That is roughly 84 million livelihoods, a scale that few organised industries can match. Domestic travel is the hidden giant: the Press Information Bureau recorded over 303 crore domestic tourist visits in the first eight months of 2025 alone, driven by pilgrimage, family travel and a rising middle class. When the question was set in 2014, the government had only just begun to treat tourism as policy rather than publicity, with the e-Tourist Visa launched that November and the Swadesh Darshan and PRASAD schemes building theme circuits and pilgrimage infrastructure. A decade later, the foundation is visibly larger.

Moreover, tourism has an inclusive reach that most growth sectors lack. A homestay in Spiti, a weaver's village on a craft trail in Kutch or a tribal cooperative running eco-cottages in the North East earns directly from the visitor, without needing a degree or a factory licence. Women form a large part of the informal hospitality workforce, from cooks to artisans to self-help groups that sell local produce. NITI Aayog's August 2025 report, Rethinking Homestays: Navigating Policy Pathways, argued that homestays can spread tourism income to remote households if regulation is simplified. In this sense tourism is not just an industry but a form of decentralised development, carrying cash flows into hill districts, coastal villages and border areas where other jobs are scarce.

Building upon this, tourism is also a lever of soft power and national integration. The Incredible India campaign, launched in 2002, gave the country a confident global brand, and yoga, Ayurveda and Indian cuisine now travel ahead of the tourist and invite visitors in. Hosting G20 meetings across many Indian cities during the 2023 presidency showed delegates a country far wider than Delhi and Mumbai. At home, schemes such as Dekho Apna Desh and the idea of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat use travel to let a Tamil family see Ladakh and a Bihari student see Kerala. A nation that travels within itself understands itself better, and that civic return is as real as the economic one.

Yet the gap between promise and performance remains wide. In 2019, before the pandemic, India received about 11 million foreign tourist arrivals, while Thailand, a country a fraction of India's size, received more than three times as many. The World Economic Forum's Travel and Tourism Development Index 2024 placed India at 39th, praising its natural and cultural resources while marking it down on infrastructure and the tourist service environment. Visitors still meet poor last-mile connectivity, unclean surroundings, aggressive touts and opaque pricing. Concerns about the safety of women travellers, magnified by a few widely reported crimes, deter solo visitors. Monuments of world rank often lack basic toilets, signage or trained guides, and a tourist who has a bad experience tells the world faster than any campaign can repair.

There is a sharper warning too. Unplanned tourism can destroy the very assets it sells. The 2013 Kedarnath disaster exposed construction along fragile riverbeds; the land subsidence at Joshimath in 2023 and the floods that ravaged Himachal Pradesh the same year showed what happens when roads and hotels outrun the carrying capacity of young mountains. Plastic waste on Himalayan treks, crowded beaches in Goa and traffic jams at Rohtang reveal the cost of overtourism. The world offers both lessons and remedies: residents of Barcelona protested against mass tourism in 2024, Venice began charging day-trippers that year, and Bhutan follows a "high value, low volume" model through a sustainable development fee. Tourism is also brittle. The pandemic emptied hotels in 2020, and the terror attack at Pahalgam in April 2025, which killed 26 people, emptied a valley that had just begun to recover. A sector so exposed to shocks cannot be the next big thing unless it is built for resilience.

The path forward, therefore, lies in treating tourism as an ecosystem rather than a set of destinations. Infrastructure is the first pillar: regional air links under UDAN, the Cruise Bharat Mission launched in September 2024 with the aim of doubling cruise passengers by 2029, and the Union Budget 2026-27 proposal to develop fifteen archaeological sites such as Lothal, Dholavira and Rakhigarhi as cultural destinations. Skills are the second: the same Budget proposes to upskill 10,000 tourist guides, and hospitality training must reach small towns, not just hotel schools in metros. Safety and trust are the third, through tourist police, verified operators, clean public amenities and transparent pricing. Diversification is the fourth: wellness, medical, rural, adventure, wildlife and spiritual tourism each draw a different visitor and spread demand across seasons and states.

Finally, the governance of tourism must match its federal nature. Tourism sits largely with the states, so the Centre can fund and brand while states must regulate land use, licence homestays and enforce environmental rules. Carrying-capacity studies for hill towns and coasts, permit systems for fragile ecosystems and community ownership of local ventures would ensure that growth does not become plunder. The Swadesh Darshan 2.0 shift towards destination-centric, sustainable development is a step in this direction. The aim should be fewer bottlenecks and more benefit sharing, so that the boatman at Hampi and the homestay owner in Spiti gain as much as the large hotel chain.

The ancient Sanskrit maxim Atithi Devo Bhava, the guest is god, has served India well as a slogan. Its deeper meaning is a duty of the host: to keep the house clean, safe and welcoming, and to offer what is genuinely one's own. Tourism will become the next big thing for India not when more posters are printed but when every visitor leaves wanting to return and every host community finds that the guest has enriched rather than exhausted it. With its civilisational depth, its young workforce and its growing domestic traveller, India holds every ingredient. If it pairs ambition with sustainability, tourism can do for the twenty-first century what software did for the late twentieth: carry India's name across the world while carrying livelihoods into its remotest corners. The coracle at Hampi will then be more than a ride across a river; it will be a passage into a shared prosperity.