Pilgrimage Leads India’s Overnight Travel
INDIA
/ ECONOMY & LIVELIHOODS
Pilgrimage Leads India’s Overnight Travel
A new national survey puts pilgrimage at the centre of overnight
domestic travel. But trips, temple finances, household worship and festival
trade still sit in separate statistical lanes.
Illustrative
editorial image: flower-market activity around a place of worship.
BIZ MASALA RESEARCH •
INDIA • 15 OCTOBER 2026
Nearly half of India’s overnight domestic
trips in a new national survey were made for pilgrimage or religious reasons.
That is the clearest official signal yet of how central faith-linked journeys
are to the country’s travel map—and a better starting point for measuring the
businesses and livelihoods around them. [1]
The finding comes from the National
Statistics Office’s Domestic Tourism Expenditure Survey, conducted from July
2025 to June 2026 and released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme
Implementation on 23 September. Pilgrimage and religious purpose accounted for
48% of overnight trips in the survey’s 365-day reference period, in both rural
and urban India. The exercise covered 2,46,113 households across 24,778
first-stage units, across India except villages in the Andaman and Nicobar
Islands that are difficult to access throughout the year. [1]
A major measurement step—with a clear boundary
The number is striking, but its unit
matters. It is a share of trips, not a share of money, people, or the national
economy. One traveller may make more than one trip; the survey also classifies
a trip by its leading purpose. And pilgrimage’s large share does not mean it is
the most expensive kind of travel: health and medical trips recorded the
highest average expenditure per overnight trip—₹29,454 in rural areas and
₹41,649 in urban areas. [1]
The second-largest purpose also differed by
setting: health and medical trips accounted for 38.4% of rural overnight trips,
while holidaying, leisure and recreation represented 36.4% in urban areas. That
is a useful reminder that India’s travel economy is not one market with one
spending pattern.
Official
NSO survey result. The 48% is a trip-purpose share, not a spending share.
A separate Ministry of Tourism series
counted 2.95 billion domestic tourist visits in 2024. That figure captures
movement across all purposes and counts visits, not unique travellers or
religious journeys alone. The NSO survey adds a different lens by asking why
overnight trips took place; neither measure, by itself, values the full
faith-linked economy. [2]
The economy begins before the journey—and continues after
it
A pilgrimage is more than a destination
entry. It can involve a bus or train ticket, a room or a free stay, meals,
flowers, offerings, local transport and purchases from small traders. The
supply chain can also include artisans, caterers, guides, priests, maintenance
workers, digital booking platforms and charitable services. These activities
are visible in different records, if they are recorded at all; they do not
automatically belong to one economic category.
Illustrative
image: visitors and small traders around a pilgrimage destination.
Faith-linked spending also happens at home.
Pew Research Center’s 2019–20 survey of 29,999 Indian adults found that 76% of
Hindus performed puja at home at least weekly and 53% did so at a temple. The
study offers a strong measure of religious practice across communities. It did
not ask respondents to total the cost of flowers, oil, food, offerings or
services, so its findings cannot be converted into a national spending figure.
[3]
Pew’s
practice measures describe frequency, not expenditure. Interviews took place
before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why the familiar headline totals do not add up
Several large figures circulate in coverage
of India’s faith economy. A ₹3.02 lakh crore “temple economy” and ₹4.74 lakh
crore in pilgrimage spending are often attributed to NSSO. In the source
material reviewed for this story, however, the original NSSO table,
calculation, reference year and treatment of overlap could not be traced. They
should therefore be described as secondary attributions—not as a verified
official national total. [6]
A commercial market-research firm, IMARC,
estimates India’s religious and spiritual market at $70.14 billion in 2025 and
$75.50 billion in 2026. Its estimate uses a proprietary definition and spans
multiple faiths. It is a vendor model, not an audited national-accounts series,
and cannot simply be added to temple, travel or festival estimates. [4] The
earlier working draft’s ₹0.59–1.43 lakh crore life-cycle-rites range is also an
author-built sensitivity model, based on assumed events, participation and
spend; it is not measured national expenditure and may overlap with other
categories.
A narrower study can be more useful than a
sweeping total. Research commissioned by the British Council and West Bengal’s
tourism department estimated ₹32,377 crore across ten creative industries
connected to Durga Puja in 2019. That is a defined festival-and-state study,
not a national estimate; its scope and year make it a case study rather than a
directly comparable market series. [5]
Seasonal trade estimates need the same
care. CAIT put 2025 Diwali trade at ₹6.05 lakh crore and wedding business at
₹6.5 lakh crore for a reported 46 lakh weddings during 1 November–14 December.
Those are broad turnover estimates: festive retail includes ordinary purchases,
and wedding spending spans faiths. They are useful evidence of calendar-linked
commerce, but they are not a measure of ritual spending alone. [7][8]
Estimates
with different definitions, years and methods should not be stacked into a
single total.
What the numbers can—and cannot—tell us
|
Measure |
What it tells us |
|
48% of overnight trips |
Official
survey share for pilgrimage and religious purposes in the NSO reference
period; not a share of expenditure. |
|
2.95 billion domestic tourist visits in 2024 |
All-purpose
Ministry of Tourism visits; not unique people and not religion-specific. |
|
₹32,377 crore around Durga Puja |
A
2019 estimate for ten creative industries in West Bengal; a bounded case
study. |
|
$70.14 billion religious and spiritual market |
IMARC’s
2025 commercial estimate; proprietary definition and all-faith scope. |
|
₹3.02 lakh crore / ₹4.74 lakh crore |
Frequently
repeated NSSO attributions; original calculation and overlap not established
in the reviewed source trail. |
From a trip count to a national ledger
India does not need one inflated figure to
prove that faith-linked activity matters. It needs a transparent way to count
the parts that can be measured and to show where estimates begin. A practical
national dashboard could report:
·
overnight and same-day trips by
leading purpose, with consistent definitions and annual updates;
·
visitor spending on transport,
accommodation, food and local services, separated from trip counts;
·
a sample of temple and
religious-institution accounts, distinguishing donations, operating income,
expenditure and transfers;
·
formal and informal jobs linked
to travel, worship services, crafts, events and local supply chains;
·
regional festival studies with
common methods, clear reference years and disclosure of what is included;
·
estimates of direct value added
that avoid counting the same rupee as a temple receipt, a traveller purchase
and a vendor sale.
The aim is not to put a price on belief. It
is to understand how travel, institutions and local businesses connect—and what
infrastructure, worker protections and public services those flows require. A
statistical framework should cover India’s many faiths consistently, respect
regional variation and protect personal privacy.
A stronger beginning, not a final number
The new NSO finding gives India a firmer
starting point: pilgrimage and religious travel are not a marginal footnote in
domestic overnight movement. They are the leading stated purpose in this
survey. But a trip-purpose share is not a measure of total faith spending,
employment or contribution to GDP.
That distinction is the story. India can
acknowledge the scale of the activity without presenting incompatible estimates
as one settled market size. The next step is to connect travel data with
transparent institutional accounts, household and service-sector evidence, and
regionally comparable livelihood studies. The result would be more than a
headline number: it would be a usable map of an economy built from journeys,
rituals and the people who make them possible.
Sources and reporting notes
The figures above are attributed to their
original publishers where possible. Commercial research and secondary
attributions are identified as such. Figures with different definitions or time
periods are not combined.
[2] Ministry of Tourism, India Tourism Data Compendium
2025.
[4] IMARC Group, India Religious and Spiritual Market,
commercial estimate and forecast.
Secondary reporting on the ₹3.02 lakh crore and ₹4.74
lakh crore NSSO attributions, The Week.
CAIT 2025 Diwali trade estimate, Moneycontrol; broad
retail turnover, not religious spend alone.
CAIT 2025 wedding-business estimate, Financial Express;
broad wedding turnover, not faith-only.
BIZ MASALA
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