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Where discovery of India is delayed

Pallavi Aiyar

Despite the ancient connections of Buddhism, geographical proximity, and an increasing economic engagement, Sino-Indian tourism remains something of a non-starter. In 2005, India was able to attract a grand total of 35,000 Chinese travellers.

MORE THAN a thousand years ago, long before the words mobility and globalisation became some of the most overused terms in common parlance, China exported a steady stream of tourists to India. The majority of these were Buddhist monks who spent years braving blizzards and dacoits to cross the mighty Himalayas on foot. A thousand years later, in an era where mobile technologies have ostensibly rendered time-space differences meaningless, these tourists have largely vanished.

This is all the more remarkable given that, according to the World Tourism Organisation, China is now the largest source for outbound tourism in all of Asia. In 2005, a staggering 31 million Chinese travelled abroad (up from 12.1 million in 2001) and, according to the Organisation, this number will rise to 100 million by 2020, by when China will be the fourth largest source of outbound tourists in the world.

But despite the ancient connections of Buddhism, geographical proximity, and an increasing economic engagement, Sino-Indian tourism remains something of a non-starter. In 2005, India was able to attract a grand total of 35,000 Chinese travellers.

The bulk of the 31 million Chinese who travelled outside their country's borders in 2005 visited Hong Kong and South East Asia. Visitors from China have, in fact, now overtaken the Japanese as the dominant tourist group in countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. India, however, remains a blank on the mental map of the average Chinese tourist.

According to travel industry professionals in China, there are three main reasons that account for the paltry numbers of Chinese travelling to India: high costs, lack of information, and lack of connectivity.

Sharon Wu, the China representative of Kuoni Indian Trails, explained that for leisure tourism, India is hard put to compete on price with South East Asian destinations like Thailand where a week's all inclusive package is available for about 4000 yuan ($500). Just the plane tickets to India, on the other hand, cost upwards of $600.

Moreover, the tourism infrastructure in India is a far cry from the multi-laned splendour of South East Asian countries. Travel agents in China talk of clients returning from supposedly relaxing holidays to "Incredible India" in a state of shock. "Many travellers complain about Indian roads. Even the Delhi-Agra highway is not up to the standard that we are now used to in China," said one tour agent a little apologetically.

A lack of mid-range hotels, rotten roads, and inevitable cases of Delhi Belly do not make for the best word-of-mouth promotion and any other kind is conspicuous in China only by its absence.

Despite the clearly lucrative potential of Sino-Indian tourism, the Indian Tourism Ministry has yet to open an office in China. Currently all of China is handled by the Ministry's Tokyo office. By contrast the Thai government recently spent $5 million on promoting Thailand as a tourist destination in China in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.

Drawn by the commercial opportunity that China's growing hordes of newly rich tourists represent, even individual cities within the United States have begun to open up tourism promotion offices in China. The latest to do so being the city of Los Angeles.

India, however, is promoted in China primarily through a few fading posters of the Taj Mahal and Kathakali dancers, pasted up outside the Indian embassy in Beijing. In fact, there is already a basic curiosity in China about its southern neighbour but lack of information has prevented this curiosity from translating into travel.

Three trump cards

Yoga, Buddhism, and Bollywood, in particular, represent three trump cards. After decades of being suppressed, religiosity in China is on the rise and India's status as the birthplace of Buddhism has the potential to be spun into a lucrative tourist circuit. Similarly a large number of youngsters in Chinese cities are taking to yoga to tone up their bodies and soothe their minds and are increasingly interested in travelling to India in search of "authentic" teachers.

Bollywood's magic has, of course, long cast its spell on China and even when the two countries had guns drawn at the border Hindi film songs were able to scale the Himalayas with ease. Bollywood's star power could thus prove an attractive magnet for Chinese tourists, if marketed appropriately.

This last year was celebrated as the Sino-Indian Friendship year, the perfect opportunity to launch a hard sell of India as a tourist destination. This was an opportunity, however, that was sadly squandered.

For example, as part of the activities undertaken for the Friendship Year, a week-long Indian Film Festival was launched in Beijing and Shanghai in September. But the selection of films favoured the obscure art house offerings of regional cinema, hardly the best advertisement for the country.

Excited cinemagoers chattered in anticipation about Indian movies having wonderful music and beautiful actresses at the start of the films. By the end, after having watched poverty stricken tribals slowly drowning on an isolated island, river waters rising tortuously in the heavy rains, the excitement of most of these moviegoers had abated considerably.

Aside from the high costs of travel to India and the general lack of marketing of the country, infrequent flights between the two countries are another factor inhibiting more robust tourist traffic. Despite being neighbours and boasting of two of the fastest growing economies in the world, direct flights between India and China only began in March 2002, after a gap of three decades. Four years later, Air India currently operates a mere two weekly flights from Shanghai to Delhi and then on to Mumbai. In its turn, China Eastern flies three times a week from Beijing to Delhi and Mumbai but all flights are routed through Shanghai.

Until November 2006, the only direct, non-stop flight available from Beijing to New Delhi was somewhat bizarrely on Ethiopian airlines. Air China has now finally begun to operate thrice weekly direct flights from Beijing to Delhi but there are still no direct flights at all from either the Chinese capital or Shanghai to Mumbai.

Under a civil aviation agreement signed between India and China during Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's April 2005 visit to India, designated airlines from each side were allowed to operate up to 42 flights per week by the summer of 2006.

Part of the reason why flights between India and China remain so few despite the provisions of this agreement is the bald fact that passenger traffic between the countries remains so little that it is a struggle for the airlines to ensure that even the few existing flights are economically viable. China Eastern, for example, is able to fill up its planes to India only by routing passengers to Delhi from the west coast of the U.S. and Canada via Shanghai. The reason for Air India's circuitous route to China via Bangkok is similar. "It's simply not economically viable to have direct flights," said Vineet Gupte, the head of Air India's China office.

Lu Sheng, former head of marketing for Air China, estimated that for tourist traffic to really take off between India and China a minimum of 20 direct flights a week is needed. Thus it's a chicken and egg situation. The lack of flights hampers tourist traffic and the lack of tourist traffic hampers the number of flights.

In the meantime, India continues to be excluded from the opportunities presented by the burgeoning Chinese tourism market. According to the World Tourism Organisation, travellers from China spent $21.8 billion while travelling abroad in 2005. A recent Goldman Sachs report concluded that the amount spent by the average Chinese tourist "is already on a par with, if not slightly higher than, that of the Japanese."

A few days ago, the Indian Minister for Tourism and Culture, Ambika Soni, visited Beijing and met with the Director of the China National Tourism Administration, Shao Qiwei. Both countries have agreed, following President Hu Jintao's recent visit to India, to celebrate 2007 as the "India-China Year of Friendship Through Tourism." With this decision India has a second chance to boost tourism. Given that opportunity rarely knocks twice it would be a pity if this second chance too were squandered.

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