With domestic travel catching on in India, thanks to a volatile rupee, leading hotel  chains are looking to the government to promote domestic tourism to attract the creamy segment of high-spending Indian travelers who are hitting international destinations at present.

“The government should think of a campaign along the lines of ‘Incredible India’ — the campaign aimed at attracting foreign tourists into India — for domestic tourists as well. Destinations have to be marketed in a manner that makes them aspirational. Hotels don’t drive destinations,” Michael Issenberg, chairman Asia Pacific, Accor group, told Financial Chronicle. In India so far, the bulk of the domestic leisure travel is primarily centred around moments places such as the Taj Mahal or religious tourism. “The pure leisure market is really quite small,” said Issenberg.

Other international chains entering India such as Swiss International too are concentrating on domestic travelers for the bulk of their business.

Nakul Anand, executive director of ITC, and in-charge of its hotel business, however, forecasts domestic leisure travel to take off. “With travel agents marketing a wider range of holiday packages to different parts of India, domestic tourist traffic has picked up,” he says. Anand estimates that pure leisure traffic accounts for barely one per cent of demand for domestic travel in India, primarily made up by destinations such as Goa.

However, tariffs for hotels may not come down in the near future as land cost as a proportion of the total development cost in India stands at 40 per cent versus 20-25 per cent on an average in global markets.

Last year, a hospitality consulting firm, ranked Maharashtra, Goa, Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the top five states having a supportive environment for hotels to operate in. Karnataka increased its budgetary provision for travel and tourism from 0.03 per cent to 0.22 per cent it said in the study. Maharashtra, Delhi and Goa score high by virtue of being key commercial and leisure destinations in the country that have the necessary infrastructure and tourist arrivals to support hotel operations, added the consultancy.