VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – If you’re one of the thousands of people who work in a hotel or restaurant in Vancouver, you may want to take note of a new wave of tourists expected in upcoming years.

Dayna Miller with Tourism Vancouver has just come back from a trade trip to India, highlighting Vancouver as the go-to destination for what she calls a new emerging market.

“The simple reason is because they currently have a population base of about 1.2 billion and ranks as the world’s 11th-largest economy and fourth-largest in terms of purchasing power,” she explains.

“There really is an emerging affluent upper-middle class. These are the travellers that we are starting to see that are going long-haul markets… the potential for Canada is quite optimistic,” she adds.

Miller notes the number of tourists coming to Canada from the South Asian country has doubled in the last decade.