Purpose This study examines the role of heritage tourism in shaping Delhi's economic growth from 2001 to 2021, with particular attention to sustainability tensions arising from rapid visitor expansion and infrastructure constraints. Despite Delhi's status as a heritage-intensive metropolis, tourism-led growth studies in India remain largely national in scope and rarely explore city-level dynamics. The analysis also considers major structural shocks; to assess how external events reshape tourism-growth relationships. Design/methodology/approach A Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) is employed to estimate short-run dynamics and long-run equilibrium relationships between heritage visitor flows, infrastructure indicators (registered hotels and travel trade operators) and economic output. Findings Results reveal a complex dynamic relationship. While infrastructure expansion significantly promotes long-run economic growth, an increase in heritage visitors under limited infrastructure capacity exerts a counterintuitive negative effect on output over time. This suggests that beyond carrying capacity thresholds, visitor growth may generate economic strain rather than gains. However, when supported by sustained infrastructure development, heritage tourism contributes positively to long-run growth. Practical implications The research indicates that heritage-tourism strategies should not concentrate exclusively on boosting visitor numbers. Achieving sustainable economic benefits necessitates a balance between visitor growth, infrastructure capacity, carrying-capacity thresholds, digital visitor-management systems, and reinvestment in preserving heritage sites. Originality/value This study provides one of the first city-level time-series econometric assessments of heritage tourism-led growth in India, modelling infrastructure-heritage interactions and offering insights for sustainable heritage management in rapidly urbanizing destinations.
Kapoor et al. (Fri,) studied this question.