If you build it, they will come. India could bear repeating the mantra when it comes to filling a void in its tourism landscape that is strewn with palatial luxury hotels, pokey backpacker hostels or ramshackle family-run establishments with leaking lavatories.

Absent are affordable hotels with modern facilities, the lack of which will keep the tourism sector from realising its full potential. Indians are travelling within the borders of their own country more than ever before, riding the wave of a stronger economy. A slew of new budget airlines, an enlarged appetite for travel and a keener cultural awareness of their own heritage has fuelled 20 to 22 per cent growth in domestic tourism in each of the past four years.