New Delhi, Dec. 20 -- Best of the Week is a weekly newsletter by Siddharth Sharma/Shravani Sinha. Subscribe to Mint's newsletters to get them directly in your inbox.

India's tourism story is hitting a familiar speed bump-and it's beginning to feel uncomfortably repetitive. After a strong post-pandemic rebound, foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) are once again struggling to regain pre-covid momentum. In the first nine months of the year, arrivals fell 12% year-on-year to just 6.18 million, and the full-year tally is now expected to close at around 8.7-8.8 million-well below the 10.9 million recorded in 2019.

The reasons are not new. India continues to be seen as an expensive destination, infrastructure gaps persist, and concerns around safe...