Alphons allays safety fears as he woos Chinese tourists

Beijing: India is fighting a perception battle on safety for foreign tourists due to "unfair and biased" media reports that the country was the most unsafe for women, Tourism Minister K J Alphons said here.

Alphons, who is currently visiting Beijing, Wuhan and Shanghai along with about 20 leading Indian travel agents to woo Chinese tourists to visit India, said that incidents like lynchings are bad for India's reputation.

The incidents of lynching are not affecting tourism "big time", he told reporters after holding a roadshow here on Tuesday night.

"Well, not on a big time basis not really. But anything happening like that is bad for the reputation of the country. We will not say it's good for the reputation of the country," he said, adding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called them criminals and asked the states to take action.

His ministry is now focussing to attract 10 per cent of the 144 million Chinese tourists who visited abroad last year, the largest from any country.

Despite special measures like e-visas only 2.40 lakh Chinese tourists visited India last year against 14 lakh Indian visiting China.

"In 2016, India received about 251,000 Chinese travellers but in 2017 the number dropped to a mere 240,000. Given this backdrop, India has set an ambitious target of increasing this minuscule figure to an eye-popping 14 million by 2023," he said.

"We are opening an office in Beijing very soon, we should aim for at least 10 per cent of the 144 million Chinese tourists. This can be achieved in five years if we make concerted efforts," said Alphons.

Alphons said India is fighting a perception battle about safety issues specially for women tourists. He also blamed a Thomson Reuters Foundation survey which projected India as "most dangerous" country for women.

He said the story is based on interviews with 548 people out of which 43 were from India.

"Most of the 43 feminists may be anti-government. It has got politics to it," he said.

"There is a massive unfairness in the whole reporting process. There is a huge bias in reporting. It is not fair. I don't want to play with numbers. Even one such case is not acceptable Why they did story like that," he said and outlined steps like creating helpline in 12 languages, including Mandarin as well creating of tourism police by 14 states in India.

He said he is in China to "break the so called story... it is not true". The number of cases (relating to safety) are so few, he said.

He also said ban on beef eating has not affected tourist arrivals much.

"Not really. You see Kerala, Goa and North East which are beef eating states. These are all big tourism destinations. People will go where they are comfortable. We need

respect the sentiments of people anywhere. That is so fundamental," he said.