NEW DELHI: Overseas tourists will soon be able to access information in eight foreign languages – Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish at the Ministry of Tourism’s Incredible India website.
The ministry, which is in the process of revamping its website, will launch the service in the next four to five months.
According to the Ministry of Tourism, Bangladesh, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Russia, Germany and France are the top 10 countries from where India draws foreign tourists. The arrival of foreign tourists to all states has shown an increasing trend from 5.89 million in 2000 to a provisional 26.89 million in 2017, according to the data.
Statistics from 2017 show over 10 million foreign tourists visited India and the share of India in international tourist arrivals was 1.17 per cent.
“Besides English and Hindi, the ministry is in the process of making information available in eight international languages in order to make the website content more popular among tourists from across the globe. They will be more acquainted with the tourist spots and what they should expect from their visit. The idea is to help them prepare thoroughly before they plan their travel,” a ministry official said.
“Each section will be developed further with more in-depth information on the famous and most popular sites and also under each travel themes. The website is revamped from time to time and more features are added. Depending on the country from where the tourist belongs, the themes tourists from the respective countries are most interested in will be featured first while they are researching the website,” the official said.