Putting cap on visitors to Taj may be a bad idea
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A Press Trust of India story carried by the Hindustan Times says that the number of daily visitors to the monument during peak tourist season and other occasions crosses 60-70 thousand. Taj Mahal’s official website says that most tourist visits to the monument are in the cooler months of October, November and February.
Let us assume that there were at least 50 days (spread over tourist seasons and major holidays) in 2015 when the number of daily visitors at Taj Mahal crossed 60 thousand.
This means that these 50 days would account for 3 million out of the total 4.62 million visitors in 2015. The monument is closed for public viewing on Fridays. So there would be zero visitors on 52 days in a year.
This means that the additional 1.62 million visitors in 2015 must have visited i n monument during the remaining 263 days of the year. The average number of daily visitors in this period would 6,21,183
6,68,903 7,43,256 6,95,702 6,48,511 4,80,008 Total 47,09,151 53,15,106 60,24,816 58,35,342 60,72,501 46,26,321 come to around 6,200.
These statistics highlight the problem with the idea of putting a daily cap on number of ticket sales at Taj Mahal. The policy is unnecessary for majority of the year. And it would create a huge rush for tickets on peak days. It is more likely that tourists would have to line up in early hours during the peak season to make sure that they get entry before the daily cap is breached. This is bound to create discomfort for tourists during peak season.
The policy could also have another fall out. Our assumption of 60,000 daily visitors for 50 days also shows that a 40,000 daily cap could lead to the Taj Mahal losing a million annual visitors. This would have an adverse i mpact on ASI revenues too.
If the number of days the 60 thousand limit is breached is significantly less t han 50, deployment of additional human resource is a much better option for crowd control than rationing tickets.