विमर्श Vimarsh · Arthanīti
Fewer Visitors, Better Journeys
India receives about nine million foreign visitors a year. Thailand receives thirty-three million. India should stop counting heads and start earning trust. The case for India as the world’s great luxury journey.
Nikhil Sharma · अर्थनीति Arthanīti · 1 November 2026 · 6 min read
I run an inbound luxury travel business in India, so I have an interest in this market. I argue for the country, not for any company. Every figure is sourced at the end.
India will never be the world’s busiest destination. It should be the world’s most rewarding one.
Every few months someone sets India’s foreign arrivals beside Thailand’s and calls it a failure. The numbers are real. The conclusion is wrong. India is not losing a race for crowds. It is losing a race it never needed to run, and it is underselling the one race only India can win.
संख्या · The number everyone quotes
India recorded about 9.02 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2025, by the Ministry of Tourism’s provisional count. That is 8% fewer than in 2024 and 16% below the 10.9 million of 2019 (Business Today, TravTalk). Thailand received 32.97 million in the same year (The Nation).
It is worse than it looks. India counts patients and visiting family in that figure. The Indian Association of Tour Operators puts the foreigners who come only to see India at two to three million a year (Business Today).
मूल्य · The number that matters more
In 2025 those nine million visitors brought India ₹2.73 lakh crore in foreign exchange (TravTalk). That is roughly ₹3 lakh for every arrival. The number counts every rupee a foreigner spends here, the hospital bill included, so it flatters leisure travel. But the shape is clear. India does not earn from volume. It earns from depth.
India’s own travellers have already proved the market. Indians made 4.29 billion domestic trips in 2025, almost twice the pre-pandemic peak (Business Today). Luxury room demand is forecast to grow about 10.6% a year to FY28 against supply growth of 5.9% (The Core). The best rooms in India are filling with Indians. The world has not yet been told.
तुलना · Why Thailand is the wrong benchmark
Thailand built a brilliant machine for short, easy, affordable holidays. India cannot copy it and should not try. India is too large, too layered and too intense to be consumed in four nights between beaches.
The right benchmarks are places where a journey is the product: Japan for craft and courtesy, Italy for heritage lived in daily, East Africa for safaris sold at a price that protects the land. Each earns more from each traveller by asking more of the journey. India has all three of those stories in one country and sells them as a discount.
India is not a bargain. It is a privilege. It should be priced and hosted like one.
विलासिता · What luxury means in India
Luxury in India is not marble and a minibar. The world has those everywhere. It is access and time: a private evening in a fort that is still a family home, a weaver’s courtyard in Gujarat, a houseboat at dusk in Kerala, a guide who can tell you why a temple faces east and a chef who cooks what his grandmother cooked.
Indian hoteliers understood this decades ago. Palaces such as the Lake Palace in Udaipur and Umaid Bhawan in Jodhpur became hotels and became the images the world still holds of India. Their success was never the room. It was the story around the room.
It is also three Indias in one trip. The metro India of Mumbai and Delhi, the rising Bharat of the second cities and the Hindustan of the villages, where the deepest experiences live ([India, Bharat, Hindustan](/soch/vimarsh/india-bharat-hindustan)). A luxury journey that sees only the first has seen the least of the country.
बाधा · What stands in the way
Ask travellers why they hesitate and the answers are consistent: scams, safety, hard transport and complicated visas (Business Today). None of these is about India’s beauty. All of them are about the first hour and the gaps between the sights.
The first hour. A tired traveller at an airport at midnight decides what India is before seeing anything. The tout at the exit, the taxi with no meter and the fake “government” tourist office do more damage than any travel advisory.
The gaps. India’s monuments are world class. The roads, toilets, signage and drivers between them often are not. Luxury travellers will forgive a long drive. They will not forgive feeling unsafe or unattended on it.
The people. Luxury is a service carried by guides, drivers, butlers and chefs. Most are underpaid and undertrained for the travellers who pay the most. Every gap in their training shows up in a review.
मार्ग · What would change it
Sell depth, not breadth. Fewer cities and longer stays. A twelve-night journey through Rajasthan and Gujarat earns more and exhausts less than the Golden Triangle rushed in five.
Own the first hour. One trusted host from the aircraft door to the hotel, by name. Every airport should make the official route out the easy route out, and every state should punish the touts who prey on arrivals.
Pay and train the people who carry the experience. A certified guide or chauffeur on a career path is the cheapest luxury upgrade India can buy.
Be found where the world now asks. Travellers increasingly plan with AI assistants. The house I run was rebuilt to be found there first, and since 4 July it has received 67 enquiries from AI answers across 12 countries. India’s tourism boards and hotels should publish clear, factual, well-sourced answers and stop hoping a campaign film will do it.
Price with confidence. Discounting tells the world India is a bargain. The palaces, wildlife reserves and craft villages are scarce. Scarcity should be priced, and part of the price should go back to the places and people who keep them.
This is the same argument I make for India’s economy: the demand is there and the limit is supply, of trust, of skills and of service ([The argument for India](/soch/vimarsh/the-argument-for-india-is-a-supply-argument)).
मेरा दांव · My wager
By 31 March 2029 India will report foreign exchange earnings from tourism above ₹3.5 lakh crore for calendar 2028, up from ₹2.73 lakh crore in 2025, as published by the Ministry of Tourism. If it does not, India is still selling visits when it should be selling journeys.
श्रेय · Credit where due
India’s great hotel houses deserve credit for showing the world a luxury that is Indian, not imported. The states of Rajasthan and Kerala deserve credit for turning heritage and landscape into brands the world recognises. The Ministry of Tourism deserves credit for the e-visa and for publishing the numbers this essay rests on, including the uncomfortable ones. Indian travellers deserve the most credit of all: they filled the country’s best rooms when the world stayed away.
What I am not saying
I am not saying India should welcome only the rich. A backpacker who falls in love with India at twenty-two returns at forty-five with a family. Every traveller matters.
I am not saying the numbers do not matter. I am saying value is the better goal, and that a country earns its numbers by earning trust first.
Gurugram, 1 November 2026.
Sources, checked 1 November 2026. Arrivals in 2025 and 2019, domestic trips, the tour operators’ estimate and the reasons travellers give: Business Today, 31 Aug 2026. Arrivals and foreign exchange earnings in 2025 (provisional, Ministry of Tourism Annual Report 2025–26): TravTalk, 2 Mar 2026. Thailand: The Nation, 6 Jan 2026. Hotel performance in 2025: HVS Anarock via Hospitality Net, May 2026. Luxury room demand and supply forecasts: The Core, 7 Jan 2026. AI enquiries: the author’s own business records.