MoSPI’s household survey of 2,46,113 households finds pilgrimage and treatment, not holidays, drive overnight travel. The Tourism Ministry’s count of domestic visits, built from state reports, rose 45.5% to 428.55 crore in 2025, and no published note reconciles the two.
India’s First Tourism Survey Since 2014-15 Finds Pilgrimage Is 48% of Overnight Trips and Holidays 22%. The Ministry’s 428 Crore Visits Are Not Comparable With It
On 23 September the Ministry of Statistics released the first results of its Domestic Tourism Expenditure Survey, part of the National Sample Survey’s 80th round. It asked 2,46,113 households in 24,778 villages and urban blocks about overnight and same-day trips between July 2025 and June 2026. It is the first such survey since 2014-15. Its main finding is that people in India travel for pilgrimage and for treatment far more than for holidays: of the overnight trips in the 365-day group, about 48% were pilgrimages, 30% were health or medical trips and 22% were for holiday, leisure or recreation.
The survey is a rare count of trips by households. It lands next to a very different count. The Tourism Ministry reported 294.8 crore domestic tourist visits in 2024 and, in its newest compendium, 428.55 crore in 2025, a 45.5% rise driven by a jump in Uttar Pradesh from 64.7 crore to 155.7 crore visits, a year that included the Maha Kumbh. These are not the same quantity, and the two have not been set beside each other in any published note.
What the survey found
The survey asks about two groups of trips, and the headline shares come from the longer reference period. As the press coverage describes it, trips for purposes such as pilgrimage, health and leisure were recalled over the past 365 days, and other overnight trips (social visits, business, shopping and similar) over the past 30 days. That is why different outlets quote different “top” purposes: pilgrimage leads the 365-day group, social visits make up about 89% of the 30-day group, and business trips are the most expensive in that group. The three shares in the chart are shares of the first group only; they are not shares of all travel.
Health travel is a larger share in rural India: 38.4% of rural overnight trips in the 365-day group, the second-largest purpose there. It is also the costliest per trip.
| Average spending per overnight trip | Rural households | Urban households |
|---|---|---|
| Health and medical trip (365-day group) | ₹29,454 | ₹41,649 |
| Business trip (30-day group) | ₹5,179 | ₹6,934 |
Press coverage of the MoSPI press note (BusinessToday, The Tribune, Chartforest). The health figures include package and non-package spending. Another outlet gives different per-trip figures for shopping and health that do not match these and are not used.
A health trip cost a rural household an average of ₹29,454 and an urban household ₹41,649, several times the cost of a business trip in the 30-day group. In the same-day group, the survey found that more households made a trip than in 2014-15: 65.1% of rural households against 57.1%, and 46.2% of urban households against 40.6%, as reported. Shopping was the largest item of same-day trip spending, at 51% of it in rural areas and 41% in urban areas.
The average overnight trip involved about two travellers. By visitor-trips, Uttar Pradesh accounted for 15.7%, Tamil Nadu 13.4% and Rajasthan 8%.
Two counts of the same country
The Tourism Ministry’s figures come from a different source. It compiles visits from the states and union territories, which report them by their own methods; some state figures are estimated, one series notes that a state’s 2024 count was obtained by applying the all-India growth rate to its 2023 count. A traveller who visits three states is counted three times, and a single visitor who makes two trips is two visits.
A rough check shows how far apart the two are. At 127 to 132 overnight trips per 100 households, and taking the 25 crore households of the 2011 Census as a low base (there are more now), the survey implies something like 32 crore overnight trips a year in the 365-day group. The ministry counted 295 crore visits in 2024 and 429 crore in 2025. The figures cannot be subtracted: visits are not trips, the survey’s 365-day group omits some travel, and the ministry’s count may include day visitors. But the gap is large enough that a reader cannot tell from either publication how many journeys Indians actually make.
| State | Household survey, 2025-26: share of visitor-trips | Tourism ministry, 2024: share of domestic visits | Tourism ministry, 2025: share of domestic visits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uttar Pradesh | 15.7% | 21.9% (647 million of 2,948) | 36.3% (155.74 crore of 428.55) |
| Tamil Nadu | 13.4% | 10.4% (307 million) | – |
| Rajasthan | 8.0% | – | – |
Survey shares as reported in press coverage; the exact base (trips by destination, within which reference group) was not seen. Ministry shares are this blog’s arithmetic on the ministry’s state-reported visit counts as reported in the press.
The state shares point the same way. Uttar Pradesh is 15.7% of the survey’s visitor-trips but 21.9% of the ministry’s 2024 visits and 36.3% of its 2025 visits. Tamil Nadu is the opposite, at 13.4% in the survey against 10.4% of the ministry’s 2024 count. The two sources differ in period, base and method, so none of these gaps is evidence of error, but a single administrative figure that moves from 64.7 crore to 155.7 crore in a year is something a household survey would be expected to help interpret.
What this means for tourism policy
Tourism schemes in India are usually described in terms of leisure and foreign visitors. The household survey says that, among overnight trips in the 365-day group, a pilgrimage is more than twice as likely as a holiday, and a trip for treatment more likely than a holiday. Whether the Tourism Ministry’s spending follows that pattern is not published by trip purpose.
What would fix this
- The Ministry of Statistics should publish the full survey tables by state, purpose and package or non-package spending, and a note comparing the design with the 2014-15 round (reference periods, trip definitions), so the reported rises in same-day travel can be checked.
- The Ministry of Tourism should publish, for each state and union territory, how a “domestic tourist visit” is counted and which figures are estimated, in the annual statistics, so state counts can be compared with one another.
- The Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Statistics should publish a joint note reconciling the administrative visit counts with the survey’s trip counts, with the number of trips per person and the share of day visitors in each.
- The Ministry of Tourism should report its scheme spending by main trip purpose, pilgrimage, health, leisure and business, so spending can be compared with where trips are made.
- The states with the largest reported visit counts, starting with Uttar Pradesh, should publish the source of each year’s count, including any event-driven jumps such as the 2025 Kumbh, separately from the baseline.
These are proposals from this blog, not recommendations any agency has adopted.
Sources and caveats
Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation: “Press Note on Domestic Tourism Expenditure Survey July 2025 to June 2026” (23 September 2026, PIB 2313894); “Domestic Tourism Expenditure Survey” (17 December 2025, PIB 2205155, on the survey design); workshop of trainers for the survey and the National Household Travel Survey (29 May 2025, PIB 2132274); titles and dates from this blog’s PIB index. The press note itself is hosted on a site that could not be opened from this blog’s tools, and PIB pages could not be opened either, so the survey results are from press coverage of it (BusinessToday, The Tribune, Chartforest, Trav Talk, Retail Intel and others). Outlets differ on some figures, such as per-trip spending on shopping and health, and on which purpose “leads”, because they quote different reference periods; the figures used here are those that agree across at least two outlets or that are explicitly tied to a reference period. The descriptions of the 365-day and 30-day groups are from that coverage and not from the survey instrument. The MoSPI data portal’s NSS 80th-round dataset lists only telecom and education indicators, not tourism, so no table could be checked there. Ministry of Tourism visit counts (2,948 million in 2024; 428.55 crore in 2025; Uttar Pradesh 647 million and 155.74 crore; Tamil Nadu 307 million in 2024) are from press coverage of its India Tourism Data Compendium and a dataset derived from it; the 2025 figures were not seen in the original. The household count of 25 crore (the 2011 Census figure) is this blog’s assumption for the order-of-magnitude check, and all shares and ratios are this blog’s arithmetic. The survey’s state shares are given as reported, with the base unconfirmed. This article does not say that either count is wrong.
About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.
