Tourism has probably been one of the major failures in our country. Even today we have about 100,000 hotel rooms in a country of the size of India. In 1980, I recollect having come to India to attend the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) Convention in Chennai. The then minister for tourism in his address assured the audience that we would reach the 5 million-mark for inbound tourist arrivals before the end of the decade -- that is, before 1990. Two decades later, in 2000, we had achieved only 2.65 million tourists.

Tourism was never considered very important. I recollect the Indian Prime Minister in the 1980s saying in his opening remarks at a Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) function in New Delhi that the financial benefits of tourism are only incidental. Enough of the gloom. The government did wake up to tourism and we started to see double digit growth and crossed 5 million in 2007 and should cross 7 million this year.

Multiple factors, such as opening up of civil aviation, larger and more modern airports, and a much higher number of cities with international airports (which, at last count, stood at 23), have helped tourism. Electronic visas and visas on arrival should now see India sustaining a double-digit growth and I hope the tourism numbers will dramatically change by 2020.

With economic liberalisation in 1991, India created a massive middle class, which today is the backbone of tourism. If India's economic growth goes back to 8 to 10 per cent, we will certainly see domestic tourism expanding very, very rapidly.

But then, our infrastructure will be under great stress and the number of hotel rooms would need to be tripled. It is heartening to see that the present government not only accords tourism priority, but also understands the economic and employment benefits that tourism brings. This will need to be backed up with major structural changes needed to develop the tourism infrastructure.

Sarovar is a young company, which has just completed 20 years, and is now operating 70 hotels and five major institutional services. We operate two hotels in Africa, one is more under construction, and I hope that by 2020 we would have a major presence in that continent.

I am more excited about the potential of growth in India where not only hotels but motels would become a reality as a result of aggressive highway development programmes. Sarovar genuinely would endeavor to be a pan-India company covering every possible location. I certainly hope we will be operating well over 100 hotels in India and continue our expansion in the three-, four- and five-star categories, leaving the luxury market out of our scope. Motels, whose time we think would come very soon, will definitely be another major field to expand in.

Anil Madhok is the Founder-Managing Director of Sarovar Hotels