Q		The Travel and Tourism Council ranks India’s tourism market as among the top three fastest growing in the world and value is expected to quadruple by 2020. What is at the heart of this growth? Is it as simple as correlating tourism to GDP growth?
A		It’s absolutely not as simple as correlating tourism to GDP growth, but what the GDP growth has done has put India, increasingly, on people's radar screens in Europe, the United States and even other Asian countries. The more visibility India has gotten in the press and also through the increasing popularity of Bollywood movies and all the rest of it, I think that’s fueled a rapidly growing interest in India.
Q		When you've visited India over the years, what strikes you as most telling about the state of travel and tourism there?
A		Two things. One, the explosion in air travel options. The emergence of all the private air carriers really gives tourists – especially foreign tourists who are coming in with a limited amount of time – a lot more options of what they can see and where they can get to in the country quickly. It used to be that there were many destinations that you really just had to go to by train and then that was three days to get there! That’s the one thing, the explosion of air travel, much of it fairly affordable.   The other thing is, what has absolutely not kept pace, is the hotel room stock. There just aren’t enough rooms. In season it can be almost impossible to get bookings. The prices, as a result of the law of supply and demand, have skyrocketed and, frankly put, there’s a big gap in India in the middle. There are super luxury properties. If you have no budget limitations at all and you’re able to spend between $600 and $1,000 a night, you can certainly stay in an amazing place. Even those sell out in season. If you’re a backpacker and you’re willing to lay your own clean sheet on something, you can probably find a place to lay your head down.   They really need to ramp up the mid category of just clean, safe, comfortable. I don’t know what would be the equivalent here. A Holiday Inn Express or something like that. There is an attempt to meet that market. There’s acknowledgement in the industry that that’s a big market that’s waiting to be served. The supply just has not kept up with demand, across the board. I know even in Delhi, where they’re trying to ramp up for the Commonwealth Games, it’s anyone’s guess if they’re going to have enough hotel rooms.   Those two things I think are the things that strike me the most. Will they have the hotel capacity for the big events they are hosting, which would then have a residual positive effect for tourism in those areas? I don’t know. I don’t know that they’re going to.
Q		The Indian government has promoted an image of "Incredible India" to foreign tourists and within the country has worked to make the populace believe that "The Guest is God." Do you think those messages are changing attitudes? If given the chance, how would you convince non-Indians to visit India and then get Indians to travel within their own country?
A		I don’t think there is any need to encourage Indians to travel within their own country. My understanding is that Indians are enjoying seeing their own country as never before. As the middle class has more disposable income, traveling in India and seeing the sights of India has become very popular with Indian middle-class and upper-class tourists. I don’t think there’s really anything that needs to be done to encourage that.   In terms of foreign tourists, I think the campaign has probably been very successful. Hospitality in India is fairly wonderful and it's hard to be treated better in a hotel – maybe Thailand or some of the southeast Asian countries come close – but the level of service is fairly extraordinary.   I think the problem is that foreigners who do not know India at all, who see these tourism campaigns and these beautiful images – which are real and do exist and are part of India – they come in to land in Bombay skimming over the slums. They’re like, "Where was that picture on the guide?" The disconnect between the sort of airbrushed image of Incredible India and the reality on the ground can be a real shock to people.   I know some American tourists personally, people who are highly educated, who have traveled all over the world – in one case, very affluent people from San Francisco who went with a tour that was organized by one of the big museums. They were absolutely shocked by the poverty that they saw, by the unsanitary conditions. The husband got very, very ill with giardia. They were in five-star hotels and all the rest of it. And he’s a doctor and it took him months to recover. People come home with these stories.   I think the campaign has been very, very successful. The danger is that to the extent that they don’t improve the basic infrastructure and realities on the ground, the tourists will say, "Hey, this isn’t what I was promised."
Q		You trace much of India's current economic success to Rajiv Gandhi's administration and the subsequent liberalization of trade in the early 1990s.  Certainly the tourism market changed as a result of these reforms too.  What do you believe will help or hurt Indian tourism in the next five years?
A		What will help will be anything that can contribute to encouraging the construction of more hotels and lodging options. I think they have a real problem there. They just don’t have the supply to meet the demand. That’s going to be the thing that would help the most.   What would hurt Indian tourism most would be any kind of political instability or a major climactic, cataclysmic event. If there’s a huge Hindu-Muslim riot, massacre, or if the Maoists do some big attack. Anything can happen in India at any time, but if something like that happens, that really grabs the headlines, it would be negative for tourism. The other thing is they had record flooding this monsoon, again. The environment is pretty much at the breaking point. They’re going to be hit hard by global warming. How much of that will affect coastal resorts or just take out essential infrastructure and all of that?   Those are the two things that could hurt: political instability or environmental catastrophes, perhaps related to climate change. To help, getting those hotel rooms built. They’ve got the transportation. You can take a flight. You can hire a car. The roads have improved. The trains have improved dramatically. You can get anywhere, and there are so many more flights to India. You can get there, you can get around, but can you find a place to stay the night? That just seems to me to be the big question in Indian tourism.
Q		Tourism or otherwise, is India being responsible with its growth?
A		Unfortunately, India, like a lot of other countries in the world, including the United States, has seen most of the benefits of the growth accrue to the uppermost level of the society. It has not so far been able to really harness the poor to the growth engine. Unless it’s able to do that, then the basic conditions of sanitation, of housing, of infrastructure and all this is just not going to improve. That will have an effect on tourism.   It will be interesting to see how long India can sustain this "India Shining" kind of image to the West. The image is already very tarnished in India. I just had an email from a young man who just spent two years working for a big Indian company in Bombay. He went right out of an Ivy League college. He was all excited about going to work in India.   He just sent me this email saying, "I just wanted to let you know what was happinging with me. I’m moving on." He basically said in his email that he couldn’t take living in Bombay anymore. The dirt and the pollution and the crowds and the frustrations. Here is somebody who was really excited when he went there when I spoke with him. He said it was a really valuable experience, he’s glad he did it; it’s a fantastic country in a lot of ways, but it’s just so hard to live there.   I think the best answer to the question is: the government of India has the best of intentions. It knows what it needs to do to make sure that the rest of the train, all the way down to the caboose, gets hooked on to this growth engine. It has so far not been able to translate good intentions into policies that are effective. That is a real problem.   The tourism industry, in the same vein, I think has over-invested in the five-star category. That’s where they see the big money. They’ve under-invested in that hugely under-served middle-range market, and under-served not only in terms of Indian tourists, but foreign tourists. I would say that’s the corollary in the tourism industry.
Q		One of the great motivators in visiting India these days is to see what this rising power is like firsthand. So, where should one go and what should one do if one wants to get a sense of how the fastest growing democracy is transforming America and the world?
A		One should definitely make a little trip down to the suburban area of Gurgaon from Delhi and look at the shopping malls. They’re all clumped together. It’s very easy to do. So a visit to Gurgaon to see the shopping malls and the multinational skyscrapers, with the cows wandering around in front. You can get a shot of a Benetton sign and a rickshaw in the same frame of your camera. All those great contrast shots, you can get them all in Gurgaon. It’s easy to go to from Delhi. It’s a day trip.   While you’re visiting Qutub Minar and all that stuff, make a day trip to Gurgaon. The other thing, of course, is to go to Bangalore. Try to get from the airport to the Infosys campus in under two hours. See if you can do it! Try to get a hotel room while you’re at it. Bangalore is an interesting place to visit because that’s the epicenter of high-tech, and probably the city in India most people have heard of in terms of India’s boom. A visit to Bangalore would be interesting.   Hyderabad would be another interesting place to visit in that vein. It’s the only city in India where Microsoft has built an installation. There’s the "Cyberabad" section of Hyderabad that you could visit. While you’re in Hyderabad, go visit the old city of Hyderabad. I say in my book that when you go through the gate into the old city, it’s like, "I’m back in India."   When Naidu was Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, he really pushed to clean up Hyderabad and modernize it so there are these wonderful, paved, wide streets and shopping malls and neon. Really, Hyderabad looks the least Indian of any Indian city. When I first landed there, I was like, "My God, this is like Bangkok or something, not India." It doesn’t look like the United States, but it looks like a prosperous southeast Asian city.   You could go to Cyberabad and see all that high-tech stuff and see the skyscrapers going up. That’s an interesting thing, to watch the way the buildings are constructed. They’re being constructed everywhere. You have these skyscrapers going up with guys in bare feet climbing up rickety bamboo scaffolding and women in traditional peasant clothes, because they had to leave their villages because they were starving, with baskets of stuff on their heads. They’re building these skyscrapers that are going to house IBM or some other multinational. Visit the old city to see what Hyderabad used to look like and what a lot of it still does. You’ve got it all there. In one city, you could see the whole thing.   One of the interesting things about India is that within minutes, you can go from not only feeling like you’re in two or three different countries, but you can be in two or three vastly different historical periods. So you’re able to travel in time and space.