India, which is a melting pot of diverse faiths, is seeing a phenomenal growth in religious tourism. But the segment is in dire need of infrastructure to support the boom.

The government says spiritual tourism claims nearly 20 per cent of the revenue pie and an estimate by Cox & Kings, one of the country's largest tour operators, says close to 70 per cent of the domestic tourist movement is for religious purposes.?It is one of the biggest segments in domestic tourism, say officials.?The growth in the sector is drawing new players. Ezeego 1, an online vendor, is entering the pilgrimage segment next month to tap the huge "unexplored" potential of the market.?"We have realised that the pilgrimage segment is very interested in online bookings," said Neelu Singh, chief operating officer of Ezeego 1.?The site witnessed a sharp rise in the number of visits and is introducing online packages to Tirupati, Vaishnodevi, Ajmer, Shirdi, Mahabalipuram and Kanyakumari.?

 

The religious tourism sector, however, is facing a gap between demand and supply. The challenge, say sources in the ministry, is to create 100,000 additional star category rooms or good quality resorts in the next three years.?Several top-line hotel and resort chains are pushing for new properties in pilgrimage centres despite the heavy backlog in clearance of new projects by state governments and the steep land prices that account for nearly 60 percent of the total cost of building a new hotel.?The Fortune Hotels chain run by Welcome Group will soon open its sprawling Fortune Faith Goradia Executive in Shirdi. The group runs three comfort hotels in the southern temple circuit in Mahabalipuram, Madurai and Tirupati. The per day tariffs, say officials, range a moderate $45-$130. ?

 

"There are a couple of three and four star hotels in Shirdi and Vaishno Devi and Fortune Hotels has luxury properties in pilgrimage locations such as Mahabalipuram and Tirupati," says Arup Sen, executive director of Cox & Kings. But that cannot accommodate the crowd, especially during the holiday season.?The Sarovar Group, which manages 35 hotels across the country, will build three star hotels — one each in the Himalayan temple town of Badrinath, Pushkar in Rajasthan and Shirdi in Maharashtra — next year.?

 

"Our hotel in Badrinath, the Himalayan pilgrimage site which remains open for three months a year, has clocked a growth of more than 150 percent in its second season," says Pradeep Kalra, vice-president, sales & marketing, Sarovar Hotels and Resorts.?The group has just set up its second hotel The Promenade in Pondicherry with 35 luxe rooms, the first one being La Duplex.?The boom in the spiritual tourism sector has a lot to do with the new profile of travellers. As business, religion and high life are becoming interdependent, the pilgrimage centres are seeing more businessmen and celebrities flocking to shrines to seek divine blessings.?"So you have the likes of the Ambanis and Amitabh Bachchan air-dashing to Tirupati and Varanasi to invoke the deities. They need luxury accommodation, nothing less," explains Kalra. ?

 

Religious tourism, says Kalra, is also another way of de-stressing. A large number of young professionals head to peaceful temple towns for "short duration holidays", he says.?"Bookings are heavy for the 11 night-12 day trip to Chardham (four religious sites), the most popular tourist circuits in the country comprising Yamnotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath," says a top SOTC official.?The package costs $795 for a group of two to three people and $730 for groups of four to six people.?The most popular with NRIs, says Sen of Cox and Kings, are Kedarnath, Badrinath, Dwarka, Puri, Amritsar, Vaishnodevi, Shirdi and Tirupati. His company promotes close to 30 spiritual destinations.?

 

Religious tourists, says Sen, cut across faiths because Indians in general like to go on pilgrimages. The fact that religious tourism is "rather secular" in India is reflected by the fact that Buddhist tourism is picking up in the eastern sector of Lumbini-Varanasi-Nalanda and Bodh Gaya.?"There has been a three-fold increase in tourist flow to the circuit over the last 10 years from countries like Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, Japan. The tourists are mostly middle-class, who treat their holidays as annual pilgrimages," says Ghulam Naqshband, chairman emeritus of Le Passage To India, which conducts Buddhist tours.?Naqshband too rued the lack of tourism infrastructure - poor transport, shoddy hotels and security concerns in the sector.
— IANS