Despite being showcased as the ‘Soul of India’, Odisha apparently fails to stir up enough the souls of domestic tourists so as to become their preferred destination, either for leisure, holidaying or for pilgrimage.
Odisha hangs on to the last slot among the top ten main pilgrimage- tourist destinations in the country led by Uttar Pradesh. And, in the destination list of leisure and holidaying, the State occupied the 7th attractive place in the country for tourists from outside Odisha. In both the coveted lists, the State was behind neighbouring competitors like Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal.
This reality check for the State has come to fore when the National
Sample Survey Organistaion (NSSO) made public the key findings of its survey on domestic tourism in India very recently.
According to the NSSO, Odisha could see an estimated 1.6 lakh overnight trips to the State from outside States during the last 30 days of its survey period of 2014-15 for the leading purposes of pilgrimage, business, social, education and others. On the other, during the year of survey period, an estimated over 9 lakh tourists from outside Odisha made an overnight trip to the State for the leading purposes of holidaying, leisure and medical, etc.
Though in the NSSO survey report, Odisha has been considered among top ten main destinations, the real data on tourist inflow in the country in 2015 released on Friday by the Union Tourism Ministry didn’t have
Odisha even among the top 10 destinations for both domestic and foreign tourists. The shocker here is Jharkhand scores up over Odisha in domestic tourists and Bihar in foreign tourist inflow list last year.
Thus, when it comes to earning more tourism revenue, the BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) States score one up over Odisha as the visitors to those States are nearly in range of 4-12 times than to Odisha. Significantly, a good growth in the tourism sector has a multiplier effect on Odisha’s economy as it can give a definitive boost to its sagging per capita income via a boost to the services sector that now is the most jobs provider nationally.
However, the NSSO survey has some startling disclosures for the State as it finds Odisha people making second-most estimated number of overnight trips in the country after Kerala, but within the confines of the State only, which means inbound tourism in Odisha is a whopping over 92 per cent vis-a-vis mere 7 per cent outbound tourism from Odisha.
Moreover, the survey didn’t find any major divide in urban-rural household trips as the gap is a mere around 3 per cent.
However, a big divide in their expenditure pattern per overnight trip has been brought to fore by the survey. While rural Odisha tourists spend maximum on shopping so as to figure among top five spenders on shopping nationally, urbanites maximum spending per overnight trip was on health and medical. This also reveals the main purpose of overnight trips made in a year by rural and urban Odisha families.