By Suman Bajpai

With an intent to measure Tourist arrivals across all States/UTs in a uniformed manner, earlier this year the Ministry of Tourism (MoT) created a methodology for collecting tourism statistics. As part of this initiative, Directorate of Tourism (DoT) along with MoT, organised a training workshop to officially kick-off the Annual Tourism Survey in Maharashtra. This training took place on 27th and 28th July, in the historic city of Aurangabad known for its UNESCO heritage monuments.

This exhaustive Annual Tourism survey will be carried out for 13 months during which surveyors will be stationed at each major tourist attractions, accommodation units, exit points of all the districts to get an estimate of the number of tourists coming into each of the tourist locations. This survey will help the tourism department understand the travel behaviour, the triggers and barriers when it comes to visiting Maharashtra. It will also help connect with industry stake holders to get an in-depth understanding of the challenges and opportunities that exist in the tourism ecosystem in the state.     

Maharashtra is one of the most popular tourism destinations/states within the country with approximately 14 crores and 92 lakh domestic tourist arrivals, whereas, the state ranks number two in terms of foreign tourist arrivals with 55 lakhs and 28 thousand tourist visits in 2019, as per MoTs statistics. A survey of this size & scale will go a long way in creating new policies and initiatives to make Maharashtra the most preferred tourism destination in the country.

Dr. Dhananjay Sawalkar, Joint Director, Directorate of Tourism (DoT),  said “We have appointed Datamation Consultants (survey agency) to conduct the Tourism survey in Maharashtra from August 2022. This survey will not only help us get updated data, but will also take us closer to the industry and understand them better in the post covid era. Hence, I request all the stakeholders to co-operate and share authentic and relevant data with the surveyors.”