Tamil Nadu has surfaced as the leading tourist destination for domestic travellers. As per the India Tourism Statistics – 2021, Tamil Nadu emerged as the state with the highest percentage of visitors. The state’s share hovered at 23 percent, followed by Uttar Pradesh with a visitor share of 14.1%.
The data reflected the number of visitors that Tamil Nadu entertained in the year 2020. As per the report, Tamil Nadu, in 2020, had roughly 14 crore domestic visitors, whereas the second leading state in domestic tourism, Uttar Pradesh, had around 8.6 crore visitors 2020.
Tamil Nadu also performed quite well in the list of states leading the foreign tourist visits falling only second to Maharashtra which topped the list with a total share of 17.6%. Tamil Nadu was not too behind with a total visitor share of 17.1% of all foreign tourist visitors arriving in the state. Maharashtra received around 12.6 lakh visitors while Tami Nadu had 12.2 lakh visitors in the year 2020.
Coming to the airports in these top-performing states, in tourism, the list was topped by Delhi Airport which saw the arrival of a maximum number of foreign tourists, with total arrivals at roughly 30 lakhs. The share percentage honed by Delhi was 36.4%. Chennai Airport on the other hand ranked at number four, just below Bangalore Airport. Chennai Airport had a total of 57,102 visitors in 2020, bringing the share percentage to 6.8 of the total percentage.
The maximum number of foreign visitors came from Bangladesh, followed by the United States and the United Kingdom. The share percentage of the three nations in 2020 were 20%, 14.3%, and 10.6%.
Tamil Nadu has been performing quite well for the past five years in the tourism sector. Despite the blows incurred by the state due to the pandemic, the state government has bounced back quite impressively.
