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Why don't you tell that too your countrymen that come too India begging for treatment, shouldn't they go too China instead? BBC News - Pakistanis crossing border for Indian medical treatmentIf Indians were not obsessed with China then why are there such a large numbers of Indians visiting China each year ?
Tourism in India and China, a striking study in contrast
The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Tourism in India and China, a striking study in contrast
It takes only seven hours to fly from New Delhi’s international airport to the Beijing airport’s new Terminal 3. It is, however, seven hours that separate a surrealist nightmare from a traveller’s paradise.
In Delhi the dystopia begins before one even manages to enter the airport terminal. Snaking, jostling, queues make the entry line into the building an obstacle course that is usually survived only at the cost of bruised baggage or body. Brightly coloured “Sorry for Inconvenience” signs apologise to the bewildered tourists who finally make it inside, while reassuring them that a “World Class Airport” would emerge from the ashes of the current mess, a.s.a.p.
When I took a recent flight to China, a formidable-looking lady officer at passport control yawned loudly before snapping: “Aap sab log meri hi window kai age kyon ruk rahe hain? Aage chalo.” (Why are all of you passengers insisting on waiting at my window, only? Move on.)
The contrast when we alighted at Beijing’s cathedral-high, light-filled, 10-million square foot Terminal 3, was disorienting in some ways. At immigration control officers took an average of two minutes to wave passengers through with a smile and a request to rate the efficiency of their performance.
A week after my return to China, India Tourism opened its first office in Beijing with considerable fanfare. The Minister for Tourism and Culture flew in especially for the occasion. An Indian food festival was launched and a cultural evening, featuring a classical dance show choreographed by the celebrated Leela Sampson, was put on.
Much was made of the fact that India and China together comprised almost 40 per cent of the world’s population. Figures demonstrating China’s potential as a source of outbound tourism were made available. China, it was revealed, is already the largest source for outbound tourism in all of Asia. Last year a weighty 40 million Chinese travelled abroad (up from 12.1 million in 2001), and according to the World Tourism Organisation this number would rise to 100 million by 2020.
But as officials from the Indian Tourism Ministry admitted, the cold fact is that last year India attracted only 68,000 Chinese visitors. There was thus much hand-wringing about the fact that Chinese travellers to India make up less than 2 per cent of the total number of foreign travellers to the country.
In contrast to the trickle of visitors venturing south of the Himalayas from China, over 4.5 lakh Indians made their way across last year, according to China National Tourism Administration figures.
Redressing this asymmetry in tourist flows is one of the main aims of the new India Tourism office in China. But as the story of the disjuncture between the Beijing and Delhi airports reveals, this is a task that is likely to remain unachieved unless a range of other asymmetries can be redressed.
The most obvious of these is the contrasting levels of tourist infrastructure available in the two countries.
Beijing alone has as many star-rated hotel rooms as all of India. While India has an estimated 100,000 such hotel rooms nationwide, Beijing will boast 130,000 hotel rooms (not including guest houses and unstarred hotels) by the time it plays host to the Olympic Games in August.
Given India’s strong economic growth in recent years it is unsurprising that the supply of hotel rooms in the country cannot match the soaring demand for them. Consequently, it has become common to pay upwards of $400 a night at five-star hotels in New Delhi. In contrast, comparable hotel rooms in Beijing can be had for as little as $100.
Thus, while China has already transformed itself into the world’s fourth most popular destination for foreign travellers, welcoming 26.1 million visitors from abroad (excluding Hong Kong and Macau) last year, “Incredible India” managed to lure only 5.3 million.
This is despite the fact that India’s historic and cultural treasures are actually better preserved than China’s, which suffered a setback to its traditional art and architecture during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) consequent to the destruction of many temples, tombs and palaces.
“Even though both China and India are ancient civilisations, in China ancient culture is disappearing so quickly, but in India traditions are really alive,” says Wu Yao Yao, a young documentary filmmaker from Beijing who visited India as an independent traveller last year.
While in India Ms. Wu, a fluent English speaker, travelled by bus, stayed in backpacker hostels and ate roadside food. She is, however, far from the typical Chinese traveller who tends to speak no English, prefers travelling in organised group tours, sticks to eating Chinese food and expects to stay in mid-level hotels at a reasonable cost.
India fulfils few of these conditions whereas only a couple of flight hours east, South-East Asian countries specialise in cheap package holidays tailored specifically for the Chinese market. So, the bulk of the Chinese who travel abroad choose to go to destinations such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
While a week’s all-inclusive package to the beaches of Thailand is available for about 4,000 yuan ($560), the plane tickets to India alone cost upwards of 4,500 yuan ($630). Admitting India’s disadvantage in the cost aspect, Minister Ambika Soni pointed to the high price of land as the main culprit.
Information lacuna
Beyond inadequate infrastructure and the resultant high costs, the major obstacle for India when it comes to cultivating the Chinese market is the lack of availability of tourism information in Chinese, as well as Chinese-language facilities on-site at tourist spots in India. Some of these issues are gradually being addressed. The new India Tourism office in China has produced several brochures in Chinese. A Chinese version of the Incredible India website is up and running.
However, when asked by a local journalist about the availability of Chinese-speaking tour guides, audio aids and so on in India, Indian Ambassador to China Nirupama Rao suggested that English-speaking Chinese visit India to become familiar with it and then to take up the job of tourist guides for Chinese groups visiting the country. For Indians themselves to become competent to provide such services, she said, it would take a decade or so.
A bright spot on the China-India tourism map is the recent increase in direct flight connectivity. From being linked by a lone bi-weekly Air Ethiopian flight in 2001, there are now 27 weekly connections between India and China, linking New Delhi to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and Kolkata to Kunming. Jet Airways will soon start the first direct flight connecting Mumbai to a Chinese city, Shanghai. Nonetheless, according to Rahul Jain, the China head for Air India, there are still only 200,000 seats a year available on direct flights between the two countries, despite the fact that there are over 500,000 one-way travellers.
The potential for growth is thus huge. However, despite the mismatch between availability of airline seats and number of travellers, most airlines which ply the India-China route are somewhat mysteriously unable to fill up available space. Instead, they make up for numbers by routing passengers to India from the West coast of the United States and Canada via Shanghai or Beijing.
Mr. Jain says the reason is that a large proportion of travellers between India and China continues to prefer to go through third countries such as Thailand, Hong Kong or Singapore. The options for flight connectivity on these routes are till much greater than those on the direct routes. Moreover, airlines like Air China and Air India are hard put to compete with the likes of Cathay Pacific or Singapore Airlines in terms of comfort and service.
That progress has been made on the Sino-Indian tourism front is a fact. While the number of Chinese visitors to India last year remained small in absolute terms, they represent an increase of 224 per cent over 2003, when only 21,000 Chinese travelled to the country. However, bilateral trade for the same time period increased by over 400 per cent, from $7.6 billion to $38.6 billion.
For India to garner a really substantial share of the burgeoning Chinese outbound tourism market, it will take more than the opening of a tourism office and the occasional food festival. Quality mid-range hotels, cheap and plentiful flight connectivity and Chinese language facilities are called for. In their absence, “Incredible India” is destined to remain “incredibly inconvenient and expensive” India.
I think the Pakistani people are natural slaves, just like their ancestors who got raped, tortured and executed into converting they then try too use China as there masters to attack India. The mentality of these people hasn't changed for centuries
