Religious trips will fuel India’s tourism boom — airlines are gearing up with record aircraft orders

India’s tourism sector is set for a boom as more travelers take trips around the country for religious purposes. The South Asian country with the world’s largest Hindu population could see an additional 50m to 100m tourists a year on account of the new Ram Mandir — a temple in the northern city of Ayodhya inaugurated on Monday — according to Jefferies. This expected footfall in the new temple will be much higher than the annual numbers for the Taj Mahal (6.5m) in India, Rome’s Vatican City (9m) and the Mecca in Saudi Arabia (20m), the note showed. Other religious sights in India such as the Tirupati Temple in Andhra Pradesh — 25m visitors annually — and the Vaishno Devi Temple in Jammu and Kashmir — 8m visitors per year — also hold a strong spiritual, historical and cultural significance in India, the investment bank said. Religious tourism is still the biggest segment of tourism in India … the creation of a new religious tourist centre (Ayodhya) with improved connectivity and infrastructure can create a meaningfully large economic impact,” Jefferies highlighted. Indian media reported that around half a million people visited the Ram temple on its opening day which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The YouTube broadcast of the opening ceremony on Modi’s channel alone received more than 11m views. The world’s most populous country is set to be the fourth-largest global spender on travel by 2030, with travel and tourism predicted to become a $410b market — a surge of more than 170% from $150b in 2019, Booking.com data showed. <br/>