India Tourism Survey Maps Trip Spending

Key takeaways

The India tourism survey found pilgrimage and religious travel represented about 48% of overnight trips in its 365-day purpose block.
Social visits represented about 89% of overnight trips measured in the separate 30-day block.
Business trips had the highest average spending in that 30-day group at ₹5,949 per trip.

India’s National Statistical Office has released the Domestic Tourism Expenditure Survey for July 2025 to June 2026, covering 246,113 households. The India tourism survey shows that domestic travel demand is not one market: pilgrimage, social obligations, health care, shopping and business produce different trip patterns and spending.

The most important reading rule is to keep the reference periods separate. The annual block covers holiday, pilgrimage, health and shopping purposes, while the 30-day block covers business, social, education and other trips. Adding or directly ranking shares across those blocks would misstate the data.

India tourism survey separates purpose from spend

Pilgrimage and religious travel accounted for around 48 of every 100 overnight trips in the 365-day purpose group. Health and medical travel followed at about 30 trips per 100. Among the 30-day overnight categories, social travel dominated at roughly 89 trips per 100.

Spending tells a different story. Business trips had the highest average expenditure in the 30-day group at ₹5,949, including ₹5,179 for rural households and ₹6,934 for urban households. In the annual block, health and medical trips were costlier still, averaging ₹29,454 for rural households and ₹41,649 for urban households.

Measure	Survey result
365-day purpose leader	Pilgrimage and religious, about 48%
30-day overnight leader	Social, about 89%
Highest 30-day average spend	Business, ₹5,949
Costliest annual category	Health and medical
Households sampled	246,113

What businesses can learn from the data

Transport and hospitality companies should avoid treating every domestic traveller as a leisure customer. Pilgrimage demand favours route density, group movement and seasonal capacity. Social travel often depends on affordable transport and family accommodation. Medical travel creates longer, higher-stakes journeys around hospital clusters.

Business travel is smaller than social travel in the 30-day count but spends more per trip on average. That supports products built around reliability, short notice and predictable ground connections. It does not mean business travel is the largest domestic segment overall.

The concise answer is that the India tourism survey maps several demand engines rather than a single tourism boom. Pilgrimage drives the annual purpose count, social visits dominate the short recall period, and business and medical trips stand out on expenditure within their respective blocks.

Method limits matter

The survey uses household recall, so it is designed to estimate behaviour across a large population rather than track each transaction. Its multi-stage sample covered 24,778 first-stage units, including rural villages and urban blocks. Definitions also exclude routine commuting and set duration rules for overnight trips.

The results are therefore best used for market structure and planning, not as a live booking forecast. Businesses should pair the survey with current occupancy, ticketing and payment data before making short-term capacity decisions.

Lapaas Voice has covered Trip.Biz’s connected business-travel agent and Adobe and Jet2’s AI holiday lab. The NSO release supplies the wider demand map those products must navigate.