Most Indians would associate vilayat with an imperial island nation situated ‘across the seven seas’. This association goes back centuries. Travel and trade between England and India can be traced back to the earliest 17th century. But as historian Michael H Fisher points out, most histories of England, India, and colonialism tend to neglect accounts of and by these Indian travellers.
It was from the mid-18th century onward, he says, that a small but growing number of these Indians began to produce written travel narratives, which vary in genre, content, and history. Thus, for the first 150 years their travel accounts were largely oral. While some of the Indians stayed back – indulging in service or business – most preferred the land as their destination for tourism, gastronomy, networking, or education.
Leisure, business, trade Similarly, the British chose India for leisure, business, and trade which are chronicled in the books depicting the days of the Raj. The colonial rulers acquainted the subjects with their language, attire, and manners.
Thus, (referred as ‘UK’) English remains the common means of communication in institutions and gatherings as does clothing and style. No wonder, travel and tourism grew, albeit with a drop during Covid period. Data suggest that in 2020, the world witnessed a loss of 62 million jobs in the travel and tourism industry due to the ‘social distancing’ norms under the coronavirus shadow.
Compared to 2019, tourism dropped by approximately 74 per cent in 2020, with a total of a billion fewer travellers over the course of the year, said a US-based website worldpopulationreview. This marked 2020 the worst year on record for tourism, it added. A study by world tourism organisation, UNTWO, estimated a loss of USD 1.3 trillion in revenues. In terms of jobs lost or put at risk, the figures came to a stupendous 100-120 million.
Impact on economies
Expectedly, the impact lay heavy on the economies of nations that rely chiefly on tourism as part of their GDP. Lesser footfall of foreign tourists cost Macau, a special administrative region of China, to suffer a 79 per cent drop in year-on-year gambling revenues. This resulted in its overall GDP to fall 43 per cent compared to the previous year.
While tourism picked up slightly in 2021, it still falls far short of prepandemic numbers. Late 2020 projections had kindled hopes that the industry would be back on track. By late 2021, the continuing effects of the pandemic thwarted that optimism. As of late 2021, most estimates do not expect the industry to rebound to 2019 (pre-Covid) levels until sometime in end-2023 at the earliest. However, as the situation improved, UK residents last year spent an estimated £60 billion overseas.
Popular destination
According to the American website ‘Finder’, in 2022, they took an estimated 71.8 million trips overseas. This was 375 per cent more than in the previous year. Within Europe, they made an estimated 16.5 million trips to Spain, making it the most popular destination for outbound tourism.
The top five most-popular destinations for Britons in 2022, according to the website, were all in Europe. In comparison, an estimated 14.5 million UK residents have travelled outside Europe in 2022. Among the top destinations was the US with about 3.2 million visitors, followed by India with 1.3 million and the UAE with 1 million.
Business travellers
Incidentally, last year, the estimated number of business trips (at 4.2 million) has more than halved compared to 2019 (9 million). The pandemic made numbers fall by about 114 per cent, according to the go-to site for Americans to find their answers in everyday life.
Meanwhile, according to the Ministry of Tourism, 10.93 million foreign tourists visited India in the pre-pandemic year 2019. Quoting information obtained from the Bureau of Immigration, Minister of Culture, Tourism and Development of North-Eastern Region G Kishan Reddy told the Rajya Sabha on April 7 that India received 6.19 million foreign tourists in 2022 as against 1.52 million in the corresponding previous year
