Key Details
The compendium brings together 2025 travel flows, state-level visits, tourism earnings and economic estimates from different reference years.
Indicator | Latest Position | Change From 2024 |
|---|---|---|
Domestic tourist visits to states and UTs | 428.55 crore | +45.5% |
Foreign tourist visits to states and UTs | 2.53 crore | +21.6% |
Foreign tourist arrivals in India | 91.49 lakh | −8.1% |
International tourist arrivals, including Indian nationals living abroad | 2.02 crore | −1.7% |
Tourism foreign-exchange earnings | US$31.69 billion | −9.5% |
Indian nationals’ departures abroad | 3.28 crore | +6.3% |
Visits and arrivals are not unique-person counts. A traveller may make multiple trips, while one trip can produce visits in more than one state.
Domestic Growth Is Heavily Concentrated in Uttar Pradesh
Domestic tourist visits rose by about 134 crore in 2025. Uttar Pradesh recorded 155.74 crore visits, up from 64.68 crore in 2024. That increase accounts for roughly 68% of the national rise, calculated from the state figures. The state’s count includes visits during the 2025 Kumbh Mela, though the report does not isolate the event’s contribution.
Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and West Bengal together accounted for 67.4% of domestic visits. State-reported foreign tourist visits also rose, by 21.6%, led by Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal. This measure records visits within states; it is distinct from the number of foreign travellers entering India.
Bangladesh’s Decline Changes the Inbound Picture
Foreign tourist arrivals fell from 99.52 lakh to 91.49 lakh. The report identifies a 73.2% fall in arrivals from Bangladesh—from about 17.5 lakh to 4.7 lakh—as the main driver. The United States remained India’s largest source market, followed by the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.
The composition of foreign arrivals shows what draws visitors:
Leisure, holidays and recreation: 39.3% of arrivals.
Visits by the Indian diaspora: 32.9%.
Business and professional travel: 11.7%.
Medical travel: 5.5%.
Foreign visitors stayed an average of 18.5 days. The average was longer for visitors from Canada (30.2 days), the United States (22.6 days) and Australia (22.3 days). Women accounted for 45% of foreign arrivals, and the 45–54 age group was the largest at 20.7%.
Arrivals are also concentrated by gateway and season: 94% of foreign tourists arrived by air, Delhi and Mumbai handled 60% of air arrivals, and December, January, November and February accounted for about 43% of the annual total.
India’s Global Position Does Not Erase a Weaker 2025
India received 1.31% of worldwide international tourist arrivals and earned 1.68% of global tourism receipts in 2025. Arrivals of Indian nationals living abroad increased, cushioning the decline in India’s broader international-arrivals measure to 1.7%. Worldwide international arrivals, by contrast, grew 4.9%.
Tourism foreign-exchange earnings fell to US$31.69 billion as global receipts grew 7.8%. The report records both declines but does not establish how much of the earnings fall resulted from the change in any particular source market.
Indians’ Overseas Travel Reaches a Record
Indian nationals made 3.28 crore departures abroad in 2025, 79% more than in 2014. The United Arab Emirates received 26.3% of departures, followed by Saudi Arabia (10.3%); Thailand and the United States ranked next.
Leisure travel accounted for 43.4% of departures, diaspora-related travel 34.1%, and business and professional travel 14.6%. The average stay abroad was 47.3 days, although education and diaspora-related stays were much longer than leisure trips. Travellers aged 25–44 accounted for just over half of departures; women accounted for 34.1%. Almost all departures (98.6%) were by air.
Indians’ spending abroad reached US$35.53 billion, up 1.6% from 2024. That spending and the departure count describe a broad mix of travel purposes, not just overseas holidays.
Heritage Footfall and State Readiness Add Further Perspective
The 145 centrally protected ticketed monuments recorded a 0.9% decline in domestic and a 6.9% decline in foreign footfall in FY2025–26. The Taj Mahal remained the most visited monument in both categories. These sites and dates differ from the calendar-year state visit figures, but their direction reinforces the need to look beyond a single national footfall total.
The compendium also includes two wider measures of tourism performance:
Economic contribution: Tourism’s estimated direct and indirect share was 5.22% of GDP in 2023–24. Direct and indirect tourism employment was estimated at 99.96 million jobs, or 16.22% of total employment, in 2024–25.
Destination readiness: The State Tourism Performance Framework compares states and UTs across 12 domains and 27 indicators, including connectivity, services, safety and governance. Goa, Maharashtra, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal were its highest-ranked states.
For international context, India ranked 39th in the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Travel and Tourism Development Index. Its resource strengths were clearer than its overall rank: 6th for natural, 9th for cultural and 9th for non-leisure resources. This is a 2024 assessment, not a fresh ranking of 2025 results.
Policy Relevance
Plan separately for event peaks and recurring demand. Uttar Pradesh accounted for roughly 68% of the national increase in domestic visits, and its count includes Kumbh Mela visits. Peak-period transport and services matter, but the annual total alone cannot establish year-round demand. The State Tourism Performance Framework adds evidence on destination readiness.
Track inbound markets alongside earnings. The fall in arrivals from Bangladesh drove much of the national decline, while foreign-exchange earnings also fell. Source-market arrivals and spending need to be read together; the compendium does not establish that one market caused the earnings decline.
Connect counts with the costs and purposes of trips. The compendium shows where visits were recorded. MoSPI’s Domestic Tourism Expenditure Survey shows why households travelled and what they spent, providing inputs for assessing tourism’s economic contribution. The datasets complement each other, but their different periods and methods mean their totals should not be combined.
Follow the Full Report Here: The Ministry of Tourism’s India Tourism Data Compendium