Kerala eyes sharp rise in tourists this year, Kerala Tourism Officer

The Dollar Business Bureau

With Kerala shifting its focus on tourism intensively with a new and wide assortment of tourism packages, the state is expecting a sharp rise in international and domestic tourist arrivals at 11% and 9% this year, up from 6.25% and 5.67% in 2016, an official from the state government said on Tuesday.

Domestic tourist arrivals stood at 1.32 crore and international tourists at 10.38 lakh during last year, generating a revenue of Rs.29,658.56 crore and Rs.7,749.51 crore, K S Shine, Kerala’s Tourism Information Officer told media in Coimbatore.

“With the State shifting into high gear with a new and assorted fare of tourism products, the arrivals are expected to increase considerably,” Shine said.

The official said that the mainstay for foreign tourists are Ayurveda and leisure tours. With the forthcoming Greenfield Airport in Kannur, the state tourism aims to establish Malabar region, which shares its boundaries with Coorg, Coimbatore and Mysore, as the new gateway of tourism to Kerala, he added.

In order to attract the domestic tourists, the government is organising a string of road shows this year in Amritsar, Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Gurgaon, Kanpur, Lucknow, Mysore, Nagpur, Rajkot and Vadodara, he added.

On the question of frequent strikes in state affecting tourism, he said that the Ministry of Tourism has urged all the political parties not to go for bandhs, bearing in mind the tourist arrivals.

On the impact of liquor ban on tourism, Shine said that it has put a negative impact and therefore the state government had removed the ban.

However, he said that political murders didn’t have any impact on the arrival of tourists, mainly from abroad.