Tourism Minister Subodh Kant Sahai announced the dates for the first ‘Global Travel Mart’ at the WTM in London. The Global Travel Mart is scheduled for 12 December 2012 and reinforces India’s commitment to become a major player in world tourism. Speaking at WTM 2011, the Tourism Minister announced his plans to double tourist numbers visiting India by 2016.
He said Tourism in India is already on the rise with the country seeing the number of visitors increasing by 10% between January and October this year alone. But the country has much grander plans and hopes to ensure that 1% of all global tourists are in India by the end of 2016. India will require an additional 400,000 hotel rooms to meet the demand, which it proposes to do through a range of Public Private Partnerships offering massive opportunities to would be partners.