World Tourism Day 2026: India’s tourism economy in numbers, and why foreign earnings fell in 2025
Official estimates put tourism at 5.22% of GDP and 8.46 crore jobs in 2023–24. Newer data shows foreign tourism earnings and arrivals fell in 2025, the arrivals largely because of a sharp drop from Bangladesh.
Why these figures come from different years
World Tourism Day falls on 27 September. This year’s theme, set by UN Tourism, is “Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism”, and El Salvador is hosting the official observance. On 26 September the Government of India marked the day with a note restating its headline tourism figures.
Those figures come from different periods. The latest official estimates of tourism’s jobs and its share of the economy are for 2023–24. Foreign-exchange earnings and foreign tourist arrivals are available for 2025, and arrivals for the first seven months of 2026. We keep them apart below, because they measure different things and cannot be added together.
At a glance
Tourism-supported jobs: 84.63 million (8.46 crore) — 2023–24.
Tourism’s contribution to GDP, direct and indirect: ₹15.74 lakh crore — 2023–24.
Tourism’s share of GDP: 5.22% — 2023–24.
Foreign-exchange earnings from tourism: ₹2,76,831 crore (US$31.69 billion) — 2025, revised; down from ₹2,93,033 crore (US$35.02 billion) in 2024.
Foreign tourist arrivals: 9.15 million — 2025; down from 9.95 million in 2024.
Foreign tourist arrivals, January to July 2026: about 5.07 million — roughly level with the same months of 2025.
India’s tourism jobs
The Ministry of Tourism estimates that tourism supported 84.63 million jobs in 2023–24: 36.9 million direct and 47.73 million indirect. That is 13.34% of the 634.2 million jobs in the economy on the Ministry’s measure. Its estimate for 2022–23 was 76.17 million.
These are tourism-supported jobs, not a count of people and not jobs created in any one year. The Ministry says its estimates include people’s main and subsidiary work, so they count jobs rather than individuals. Under its method, the direct figure counts all jobs in tourism industries such as accommodation, restaurants and passenger transport, whether or not the customer is a tourist; the indirect figure is calculated from the direct one using a fixed multiplier (2.2931) taken from the 2015–16 Tourism Satellite Account.
The latest official national tourism-employment estimate available is for 2023–24. Comparable official figures for 2024–25 and 2025–26 have not been published.
Tourism’s economic contribution
Official estimates put tourism’s direct and indirect contribution at ₹15.74 lakh crore in 2023–24, equivalent to 5.22% of GDP. Of that, ₹7.56 lakh crore is direct and ₹8.18 lakh crore indirect. The share was 5.09% in 2022–23.
This is the value tourism adds to the economy. It is not the money tourists spend or the sector’s revenue, and it should not be combined with the foreign-exchange earnings below. We did not find newer official national tourism-GDP figures for 2024–25 or 2025–26.
Why foreign tourism earnings fell in 2025
Foreign-exchange earnings are the Ministry’s estimate of what foreign visitors spend in India, based on Reserve Bank of India balance-of-payments data. Foreign-exchange earnings from tourism fell 5.5% in rupee terms and 9.5% in dollar terms in 2025 compared with 2024: from ₹2,93,033 crore (US$35.02 billion) to ₹2,76,831 crore (US$31.69 billion). The dollar figure fell further because the rupee was weaker: the Ministry’s own figures work out at about ₹87 to the dollar for 2025, against about ₹84 for 2024.
The 2025 figures are revised. The Ministry’s Annual Tourism Snapshot 2025 gave a provisional ₹2,73,638 crore (US$31.33 billion); the government’s World Tourism Day note gives ₹2,76,831 crore and the Ministry’s data portal US$31.69 billion. That note says earnings “increased from ₹63,978 crore in 2021 to ₹2,76,831 crore in 2025” — a comparison with a pandemic year. Against 2024, they fell.
Foreign arrivals fell too. The Ministry’s data portal records 9.15 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2025, down about 8.1% from 9.95 million in 2024. The Annual Tourism Snapshot, whose provisional figures put 2025 slightly lower at 90.2 lakh, breaks the change down by country. Arrivals from Bangladesh — India’s second-largest source of foreign tourists in 2024, after the United States — dropped from 17.5 lakh to 4.66 lakh, about 73%. Arrivals from all other countries combined rose about 4.3%.
The Ministry’s documents do not give a reason for the fall in arrivals from Bangladesh, and they do not say how much of the fall in earnings is linked to it.
What 2026 is showing so far
The Ministry’s data portal shows about 5.07 million foreign tourist arrivals from January to July 2026. The portal and the Annual Tourism Snapshot give slightly different figures for the same months of 2025, so we are not quoting a growth rate: on the Ministry’s available data, January–July 2026 arrivals were roughly level with the comparable 2025 period. The portal shows year-on-year falls in March and April and increases from May to July; July, the latest month published, had 722,705 arrivals.
The latest monthly earnings estimate we found is for January 2026: ₹31,200 crore (US$3.44 billion), in the Ministry’s Monthly Tourism Snapshot. One month says little about the year, and five months of 2026 remain.
What the numbers do not tell us
No official tourism-employment estimate for 2024–25 or 2025–26 has been published. We have not estimated one: growth in visitors or earnings cannot be turned into a jobs figure.
No newer official national tourism-GDP figure than 2023–24 was found.
No official national total for domestic tourism spending was found. The National Statistics Office’s Domestic Tourism Expenditure Survey, released on 23 September, reports how households travel and what they spend per trip, not a national total (see our report on that survey).
Domestic tourist visits — 428.55 crore in 2025, according to the government’s note — are visits recorded by state and union territory tourism departments, not individual travellers. The Ministry’s portal shows a 45.6% rise on 2024, which none of the documents explains; we do not treat it as a measure of growth.
WTTC’s estimates are a different measure
The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), an industry body, publishes its own modelled estimates. In July it said travel and tourism generated US$263.6 billion for India’s economy in 2025, 6.6% of GDP, and supported 46.2 million jobs. It forecasts US$286.1 billion and 48.1 million jobs for 2026.
These are not the same measurement as the government’s. WTTC’s figures come from its own economic model, use calendar years and include induced effects — spending by people whose incomes depend on tourism — as well as direct and indirect ones. The government’s estimates cover direct and indirect effects only, by financial year. The two sets of numbers should not be compared as if one had grown into the other, or added together.
A mixed picture
On the government’s own measures, tourism is a large part of India’s economy: 5.22% of GDP and 84.63 million supported jobs in 2023–24. But the latest data presents a mixed picture rather than a simple growth story. The headline figures are two years old, foreign visitors spent less in 2025 than in 2024, and foreign arrivals so far in 2026 are roughly where they were a year earlier.
Sources
This report is based on the following published sources. Rules and schedules change — confirm with the issuing authority before you travel.
- World Tourism Day 2026: India’s tourism growth and the digital transformation (PIB Explainer) — Press Information Bureau, Government of India, 26 September 2026
- India Tourism Data dashboard — snapshot, inbound, economy and jobs (read 27 September 2026) — Ministry of Tourism, Government of India
- Annual Tourism Snapshot 2025 (provisional data, January–December 2025) — Ministry of Tourism, Government of India
- Monthly Tourism Snapshot, January 2026 — Ministry of Tourism, Government of India
- Third Tourism Satellite Account of India, 2015–16 (prepared for the Ministry of Tourism) — National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER)
- Tourism employment estimates: method and series, 2015–16 to 2021–22 (Ministry of Tourism presentation to a UN Tourism workshop) — Ministry of Tourism, Government of India (hosted by UN Tourism)
- World Tourism Day 2026, San Salvador — information note — UN Tourism, 13 August 2026
- India’s tourism success story is just beginning — Economic Impact Research — World Travel & Tourism Council (industry body), 27 July 2026
- Economic Impact Research — what the figures include — World Travel & Tourism Council (industry body)
- Domestic travel: NSO data shows where Indian households spend the most — CNBC-TV18, 24 September 2026
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