India's domestic tourism is dominated by pilgrimage and health-related travel. Examine the policy implications of this trend for infrastructure planning at destination states.

Interim findings of the NSO's Domestic Tourism Expenditure Survey (DTES) 2025-26, under the NSS 80th Round, show that about 48 of every 100 overnight domestic trips are for pilgrimage and religious purposes and about 30 for health and medical reasons [1]. Destination states therefore plan not for leisure tourists but for devotees and patients — two groups with very different infrastructure needs.

Implications for pilgrimage-led destinations

• Religious travel is seasonal and crowd-intensive (Kumbh-type gatherings, Char Dham). Priority shifts from hotels to crowd management, sanitation, last-mile connectivity and disaster preparedness in small temple towns.
• Spending is spread across transport, food, shopping and religious activities rather than luxury accommodation [1] — so budget lodging and vendor spaces matter more than star hotels.
• PRASHAD and Swadesh Darshan site selection can be tested against DTES's origin–destination data, which records both origin and destination State/UT [1], replacing even spread with demand-based targeting.

Implications of health-related travel

• A high medical share is primarily a healthcare access gap: overnight travel for treatment signals that care is unavailable near home [1].
• Yet such spending is counted as tourism expenditure, so the Tourism Satellite Account may partly capitalise distress spending [2].
• Destination states must plan patient-attendant housing, transport and affordable stay near referral hospitals — an inter-departmental task, not a tourism-department one.

Caveats for planners

• The figures are shares of trips, not of expenditure, and exclude same-day travel [1]; investment must await expenditure tables.
• India's TSA still rests on a 2015-16 base year, later updated through National Accounts rather than fresh travel data [2] — DTES refreshes that basis.

India's domestic tourism is thus essentially faith-driven and need-driven, not discretionary. Destination states should converge tourism, health, urban and transport budgets around identified high-inflow corridors, using DTES evidence once final results arrive. Such convergence would make infrastructure both economically productive and socially equitable.