India puts AI and digital infrastructure at the centre of World Tourism Day

India used World Tourism Day to underline the scale of its tourism economy and its push towards digital transformation. Government figures show tourism contributed 5.22% of GDP and supported 8.46 crore jobs in 2023–24. Domestic tourist visits reached 428.55 crore in 2025, while foreign tourist visits stood at 2.53 crore and tourism foreign-exchange earnings crossed ₹2.76 lakh crore.

The global World Tourism Day theme, “Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism,” puts AI, digital platforms and data-led destination management firmly on the industry’s agenda. For India’s travel trade, the bigger opportunity lies in moving beyond destination marketing towards digital discovery, booking, personalisation and dispersal of tourist flows.

India has launched a National Digital Tourism Stack in partnership with ONDC, with a target of bringing 23,000 tourism experiences and homestays onto the platform by the end of 2028. The objective is to make these products more discoverable, trustworthy and bookable.

The Tourism Ministry also signed MoUs involving Airbnb, FlixBus, Glance, Eicher Group Foundation and MakeMyTrip covering homestays, destination promotion, mobility, digital content and community-led tourism.

B2B takeaway: The next phase of Indian tourism is increasingly about making the country’s long tail of experiences commercially discoverable. If successfully executed, the stack could give smaller destinations and tourism businesses a much stronger digital route to market.