Orissa has witnessed inflow of Rs 18,256.71 crore through expenditure of tourists, both foreign and domestic, in the past five years.

According to information provided by Prafulla Samal, minister for tourism, domestic tourists contributed Rs 17,542.5 crore during 2007-11 while overseas tourists accounted for Rs 714.14 crore.

The minister said, the department of tourism undertook a tourist profile study in 2004-05 which revealed that on an average, a foreign tourist spends 12.7 days in Orissa while a domestic tourist spends 3.9 days. Similarly, the average per capita expenditure was found out to be Rs 1,944 per day in case of foreign tourist and Rs 1,275 for a domestic tourist. 

In 2008-09, the tourism department took up another tourist profile study to find out changes, if any, in the tourist profiles. According to the study, the average duration of stay was 14.2 days for a foreign tourist and 3.7 days in case of a domestic tourist. While an overseas tourist on an average, spent Rs 2,255, his domestic counterpart incurred an expenditure of Rs 1,357.

The inflow of money through tourist expenditure has gone up steadily from Rs 3,606.44 crore in 2009 to Rs 3,973.16 crore in 2010 and Rs 4,347.36 crore in 2011.

To boost the development of tourism sector, the tourism department has undertaken a host of measures including showcasing the state's tourism potential and national and international level meets, organizing roadshows, promoting tourist spots in globally reputed media like BBC and Discovery and also taking steps for development of specific tourism segments like wildlife tourism, adventure tourism, medical tourism and leisure tourism, Samal said. 

However, the ‘Incredible Odisha’ campaign is anything but successful in wooing foreign tourists to the State.� Advertisement blitzkrieg in international media notwithstanding, not many foreign tourists are aware of Odisha as a tourism destination in India.

Apart from telecasting Odisha Tourism advertisement films, documentaries and infomercial through television networks like National Geographic, BBC and Discovery, the Tourism Department has been claiming participation in national and international tourism events to highlight the State’s tourism products.

Some of these events are the prestigious International Tourism Fair (ITB), Berlin, and ITB-Singapore, World Tourism Market (WTM), Leisure Moscow, Nirvan Puspagiri Festival in Bangkok and the PATA conventions.

However, a delegation of 29 tour operators from the UK, Germany, Malaysia and Thailand expressed little or no knowledge of the vast bouquet of tourist products in the State. The foreign tour operators were here to attend a conference on ‘Destination Odisha’, organised by eastern region chapter of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Tourism Department on Monday. The tour operators visited places like Chilika and temples in the Capital on Sunday and Monday and will be going to Puri and Konark on Tuesday.

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