International visitor arrivals to South Asia grows by 17% in the first quarter of 2010, FTAs in India up by 15.5% in May
22nd June 2010
The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) announced the international visitor arrival results for the first quarter of 2010. International visitor arrivals to South Asia, including India, grew by 17% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year. Travel demand in Asia Pacific picked up strongly in the first quarter of the year, registering a 10% increase from the same quarter in 2009. Meanwhile, foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) during May 2010 were 3.45 lakh as compared to FTAs of 2.99 lakh during the corresponding period last year. There has been a growth of 15.5 per cent in May 2010 over May 2009 as compared to a negative growth of 1.9 per cent registered in May 2009 over May 2008. Growth rate in FTAs during May 2010 at 15.5 per cent is much higher than that 1.7 per cent that was observed during April 2010. Further, since the launch of the visa-on-arrival (VoA) scheme in January 2010, a total number of 2750 VoAs had been issued. The number of visas issued under this scheme, during January-May 2010 for nationals of the five countries include 884 visas for Singapore, 736 visas for Finland, 660 visas for New Zealand, 453 visas for Japan and 117 visas for Luxembourg.
