New Delhi: From Incredible India to Disaster Delhi - that seems to be the story of the Capital with the Commonwealth Games on.And if Delhiites themselves are planning to give the Games a miss, what should you expect from the visitors?
The Singh family is planning their dream vacation to Hong Kong during what they believe will be a nightmarish Commonwealth Games fortnight.
"We all want to get out of here, nobody wants to stay. Probably out of 100 per cent in our school, 99 per cent are going out of town," said Sukhmani Singh, a student.
There was a very interesting article I read in Singapore saying Delhi's loss is Hong Kong and Singapore's gain. So there are people offering special CWG getaway packages," said Gurpreet Singh, a businessman.
The negative media has certainly taken a toll on 'Incredible India'.
Flip the pages of the newspapers and you have travel companies urging people to getaway during the Games. Maybe they realised it's was more lucrative to get people to travel out of the Capital than to persuade them to come to Delhi.Annually, India gets about 5 million visitors and the Delhi Tourism was expecting just 100,000 foreigners during the Commonwealth Games fortnight. But tour operators say that the actual amount may be 1/10th of that at just 10,000 foreigners.Delhi's 422 bed and breakfast accommodations and hotels are now getting seriously worried about the lack of bookings. According to a Commonwealth survey by the popular website tripadvisor.com, 93.5 per cent of foreigners from Commonwealth nations are not interested in coming to New Delhi.
"We did an online poll and found out that 93 percent of them didn't want to travel to India - 14 per cent of them due to security," said Sharat Dhall, Managing Director, Tripadvisor.com
However, tourism inflows at all multi-discipline sports events have been disappointing at other venues too. Beijing expected 400,000 visitors for the last Olympics but only 230,000 turned up.
It's not all gloom and doom. Since Delhi does have a very festive atmosphere right now for the Games - with hop-on-hop-off buses called the 'HoHos' and special tourist cafes - so even if the foreigners aren't coming perhaps domestic tourists from around India could use this opportunity for a Dilli darshan.
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