An Open Art Gallery Town Longs For Foreign Tourists

For two years now, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, this town and its art has seen hardly any visitors. Mandawa is among India's popular international tourist destinations, now mostly deserted, which tell the story of the pandemic-ravaged foreign tourism sector. While the rest of the economy has surpassed pre-Covid levels, foreign tourism remains at a standstill.

There is hope this will start to change.

The government has decided to resume scheduled commercial international passenger services to and from India from March 27, 2022—the start of the summer holiday season, it said in a March 8 press release.

"It's a big relief," said Rajiv Mehra, president of the Indian Association of Tour Operators. It will help bring down international airfares to and from India as more flights will be introduced. It will now be easier for foreign tourists to travel to India, Mehra said, while cautioning that newer challenges like higher fuel prices and airfares could still prove to be dampener.

It's been a long and hard two years for those reliant on international travel.

Ask Gajendra, a local tourist guide in Mandawa. Apart from Hindi and English, he speaks French, Spanish and German so he could cater to the foreign tourists who would come each year.

In pre-Covid days, Mandawa would see a footfall of about 500-600 foreign tourists a day, Gajendra claims. Since the onset of the pandemic, there haven't been any.

What about Indians? Have local tourists replaced some of the lost international business? "Indians zyada nahi aate yahaan par [Not too many Indians come here]," Gajendra says. They would constitute about 5% of all tourists, he adds.

Mandawa has a population of about 25,000, and nearly three-fourths depends on tourism to earn a livelihood, according to Gajendra. They work as guides, travel agents, in logistics or in the forty-fifty haveli-turned-hotels that the town has.

"Do saal se hum kuch bhi kaam nahi kar rahe hain [We have been doing nothing for two years]," Gajendra says.

To make ends meet, Gajendra runs a patch work business. He has learnt how to sell online and reached out to previous clients in Europe who helped with orders, he tells us while showing a WhatApp chat with a client who runs a boutique in Italy.

Mandawa, which falls in the Shekhawati region, was part of an important trade route in the 1800s. Folklore says that the region was once home to 22 'crorepatis'. To date, some of India's biggest business families trace their roots and their ancestral havelis to the region.

The palatial haveli of the Goenka family boasts of the largest train fresco in Mandawa with 24 coaches. The haveli next door features frescoes that range from the canals of Venice to Japanese sumo wrestlers. Another haveli next door showcases Belgium glass and chandeliers from Morena in Italy.

Traders from across the world would traverse the route and these frescoes were made to remind them their homes and ease them into doing business with the local Banias and Marwaris.

Three hours away from Mandawa lies Bikaner, yet another stop on the trade route.

Gopal Singh Chouhan, who organises heritage walks, says that in the entire tourist season, he has met three foreigners, all from the embassies in New Delhi. The hotel industry, the food industry, handicrafts, musicians, folk artists are all bearing the brunt of the pandemic, he says.

However, some parts of Shekhawati region have managed to draw some local tourists who drive down from Delhi, Punjab and Haryana for a weekend getaway, Gopal says.

Tourism is estimated to have directly contributed 2.7% to GDP and 6.7% to the employment of the country in 2019-20, according to a research study by the National Council of Applied Economic Research for the Ministry of Tourism. If indirect contribution were to be included, this contribution would go up to 5.2% and 15.3%, respectively, the study, published in September 2021, said.

"As many as 1.45 crore jobs, out of an estimated 3.5 crore active jobs during the pre-pandemic period of 2019, are expected to have been lost as a repercussion of the pandemic and the resultant lockdown in the first quarter of 2020-21", according to the study's findings. Even by the third quarter of FY21, the tourism sector has lost 18 lakh jobs, the study estimated.

Sites and businesses dependent on foreign tourism are worse off.

In 2019, India saw 1.1 crore foreign tourist arrivals. This fell to 27 lakh in 2020 and further to 14 lakh in 2021, according to estimates published by the ministry of tourism. These tourists spent Rs 2.1 lakh crore in 2019 but just Rs 50,136 crore in 2020.

Now, with the government opening up international travel, there is hope.

Himank Tripathi, president for external affairs & investor relations at EaseMyTrip, says travel sentiment is positive and inbound traffic to India has been gradually picking up. Tourists from Australia, United States and United Kingdom have begun to visit for leisure, he says. "Of course, numbers are not as significant for obvious reasons."

Any improvement will be slow.

To speed up the recovery, Mehra of the Tour Operators Association recommends that all kinds of visas be restored. Currently, the government is only issuing 30-day single entry e-tourist visas, he said. The government announced visa issuance free of charge for the first five lakh tourists or up to March 31, 2022, whichever is earlier. This too needs to extended, Mehra said.

Giving the sector a push is important, economically, said NCAER's study.

Gajendra is eagerly awaiting for the return of foreign tourism.

There are some early bookings that have begun to come in for the rest of the year, he says, hopeful that things will go back to normal soon.