FM Sitharaman bets big on spiritual tourism, says India attractive destination for business tourism

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the 2024 interim Budget on February 1

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman while presenting the interim Budget 2024 bet big on the growth of spiritual tourism at a time when emerging destinations like Ayodhya have seen an influx of tourists with the inauguration of the Ram Temple.

She said that spiritual tourism has tremendous opportunities for local entrepreneurship.

"States will be encouraged to undertake comprehensive development of iconic tourist centers, branding, and marketing them at a global scale," FM Sitharaman said in her interim Budget speech.

The Finance Minister said that India's economic strength has made the country an attractive destination for business and conference tourism as well. "Now, our middle class also aspires to travel and explore. The success of organising G20 meetings presented the diversity of India to grow the audience."

Hoteliers note that 10 years ago, most spiritual tourist destinations had guest houses, places run by charities where the stay was cheap but they were not hygienic. Now, all the large pilgrim places are surrounded by quality hotels and this will add to the tourism because Indians have the ability to pay and want the same comfort in a temple town as that they get in leisure tourism.

Temple towns have doubled the keys from 2015 to 2023 from around 2,300 in 2015 to 7,500 in FY23. Keys refer to individual lodging units. The occupancy levels in these places is around 60 percent including Puri, Varanasi and Ujjain.

In the top 30 spiritual markets in India, an increase of 10 percent in the occupancy is expected in 2024.

The entire India tourism market is estimated to record a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7-8 percent, spiritual tourism will grow 9-10 percent for next five to seven years.

The spiritual tourism market in FY23 stood at around $56 billion from $44 billion in 2020. Experts said that in India spiritual tourism will continue to hold the lion’s share of over 35-40 percent for a long time. The large chunk of recovery post-Covid has come from spiritual tourism and this segment will have higher value like luxury tourism when hotel infrastructure develops in these destinations.

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