In a major fillip to the Indian tourism industry, the Centre has revealed that the number of foreign tourists who visited the country last year crossed the 1-crore mark.

India’s multi-faceted culture and tradition, its many places of historical significance, people of various ethnicities, the picturesque locales in almost all the States, etc. have been major attractions which always lured large number of tourists each year.  It now turns out that the number of foreign tourists who visited the country last year had crossed one crore.

Union Minister of State for Electronics, IT, Culture & Tourism Alphons Kannanthanam informed this in Parliament yesterday.  “For the first time in the country’s history, the number of foreign tourists who visited the country crossed one crore last year, thus providing the Govt. Rs.1.80 lakh crores of revenue.  We have set in motion a plan in a phased manner to increase the number of tourists to 2 crores within the next 3 years.

“We are also contemplating introduction of an ‘exclusive tourism’ scheme which would be organized only during the nights,” he said while adding that the Tourism industry play a major role in the country’s overall production which also generated plenty of employment opportunities.