Subhadra Jalali, an ophthalmologist from Hyderabad found Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial enchanting but was inconvenienced for lack of restrooms. “The only one available for the tourists  was outside the main gate and in the scorching heat it was a long walk.

Why can’t these places be made tourist friendly by way of drinking water provision and toilets?” she questions. Besides, the Memorial, projected as a Kolkata landmark, offered no information by way of any brochures or even guides, she complained. 
This sounds familiar, say many tourists. A trip to the Mysore Palace had Malini Trivedi of Lucknow horrified as her nine year old daughter Shalini had to go to the toilet barefoot, “You have to walk through the palace without any footwear and the toilets are inside. The toilets were unclean and flooded with dirty water and trash.”
Sanjay Madhavan from Bangalore finds that parking in many tourist spots is a bigger pain. He would rather take a cab to win over this problem. But the harassment of the tourists starts the moment he gets into a cab. Dysfunctional meter machines with an aim to make an extra buck, greedy touts and guides, beggars, fraudulent tour operators, surround the hapless tourist rendering him helpless.
Admits Ravi Narayan Prasad, a cab driver from Kolkata: “People say that they get frightened when they arrive in the city as the cab drivers fight among themselves for passengers; they don’t know who is  reliable, who isn’t.” Top it with erratic train services, dirty train toilets , unclean rooms and bugs and the  problem escalate. The whole experience turns into a nightmare for the tourist advertised by the government’s tourism department as ‘atithi devo bhavo’, an oft quoted shloka in Sanskrit meaning ‘Guest is God.’
All this speaks of poor support from the administration to the tourists.  The Taj Mahal in India is a major tourist attraction, yet many foreign tourists are reported to be returning unhappy, either cheated, robbed or finding the surroundings shabby and in want of a facelift. Joseph Jacob, a tourist from Netherlands, finds that the great wonder is not what it looked like  ten years ago. “The tourist attractions in India are slowly getting affected by pollution. Oil refinery smoke is damaging the Taj Mahal, while ecosystems of the coasts, Rann of Kutch and the Himalayas are being battered by pollution.”
In this context, one can remember, though portrayed with a sense of humour, the elderly American couple getting duped by the young touts at Taj Mahal in Slumdog Millionaire. 
India witnessed an unprecedented 21 percent rise in foreign tourist arrivals in December, 2009,  compared the same month in 2008, Union Tourism Minister Kumari Selja had said sometime ago despite the world-wide recession. The campaign ‘Visit India Year 2009’ was launched at the International Tourism Exchange in Berlin, aimed to project India as an attractive destination for holidaymakers.
As per the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report, 2009, by the World Economic Forum, India is ranked 11th in the Asia Pacific region and 62nd overall, moving up three places on the list of the world’s attractive destinations. It is ranked the 14th best tourist destination for its natural resources and 24th for its cultural resources, with many World Heritage sites, both natural and cultural, rich fauna, and strong creative industries in the country.
The earning from tourism is not  negligible either , both in the domestic sector and international sector.  By 2020, tourism could contribute Rs 8,50,000 crore to the GDP, says World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), a  global forum for business leaders in the Travel & Tourism industry. Tourism is the largest service industry in India, with a contribution of 6.23% to the national GDP and 8.78% of the total employment in India.
WTTC has also  named India along with China as one of the fastest growing tourism industries for the next 10 to 15 years., saying ‘India will be a tourism hotspot from 2009-2018.’
Tourism can be defined as an extension of private hospitality and one needs to live up to this famous Indian tradition, says the famous Indian actor Aamir Khan  in one of the episodes for Government of India’s tourism department’s campaign  “Incredible India”. ’We forget this basic lesson of Indian hospitality when we have guests from other states and other countries,’ he reminds.  The star is seen sending a strong message to cab drivers, tour guides, etc. extolling them to behave  nicely with foreign tourists instead of victimising them. Well, who is there to monitor if the message has any effect?
Says Mridula Jain of Sputnik Travels, a travel agency from Mumbai, “Tourists are often  exploited, cheated out of their money and criminal elements in India can make visits to India unsafe for women and elderly tourists. For example, Goa with its sensational stories of rape, rave culture and murders has created a kind of mistrust in the Indian tourism industry. Goa is only promoted for beach tourism when it has a strong culture. How many of us know that Goa has some great temples?”
Some tourists who do not want the hustle and bustle go to places that are in the rural interiors like Ranikhet and Gangotri but these places are prone to neglect and apathy . “These areas are rich in natural beauty but they often lack basic infrastructure and accommodations for tourists,” says Alka Shivdasani, a tourist from Canada. Temples in some famous sites are known to cheat tourists, misguide them and extort money in the name of traditional beliefs and rituals. Darjeeling has a serious water problem, Nainital and Mussoorie are in the same boat and have not been upgraded to match the tourist influx. 
Medical tourism is an important segment in India today but travelling for the physically challenged is not easy. Few buildings in India are geared up with ramps for wheelchairs. Sometimes even footpaths cannot be used by the physically challenged. Restrooms have not been designed with the physically challenged in mind.
Some of the oft visited new religious tourist destination are, Bodhgaya , Shirdi and Mcleodgunj, but pilgrimage tourists who frequent these places unanimously agree that the situation has been worsening every year, with   heaps of garbage,  overflowing drains, congested and pot holed roads and no parking places.
There are often shocking incidents of crime as well.  On an April night this year, a  Japanese tourist was gang-raped on her way from Bodh Gaya to Gaya railway station late one evening.  She was on an auto rickshaw. Such reports are not uncommon with even Goa, a magnet of foreign tourists, earning a bad name for sexual assaults, even murder, of foreigners.
Today, the India as a ‘brand’ is well-recognised. The question is, can we sustain it with the unsavoury face we put up to visitors? The Commonwealth Games is round the corner with a huge number of potential of tourists from abroad. Time to look beyond glittering stadiums and flyovers to  make the correct impression. (TWF)