India has been declared as World’s Best Travel Destination and it has won three top tourism awards from the World Travel Awards (WTA).
Apart from winning the award for best destination, it also bagged the award for world’s leading tourist board award for its “Incredible India” campaign and for world’s leading tourist attraction for Taj Mahal, a world heritage site.
Accepting the award at an event here Wednesday evening, Tourism minister K. Chiranjeevi said the ministry has planned a “multi-pronged strategy to increase India’s share in tourist arrivals”.
“This includes development of world class infrastructure and manpower and undertaking aggressive promotional and marketing activities,” the minister said.
He also said the ministry has launched the second phase of the Incredible India campaign where the focus was on destination and products to attract tourists to the country.
In 2011, 6.29 million tourists visited India as compared to 5.78 million in 2010.
The minister also said that tourism has become an instrument for sustainable development including poverty elimination, environmental regeneration and job creation in countries across the world.
The World Travel Award, considered to be the biggest awards in the travel industry, was for the first time held in Asia.