Kerala - Kochi   

A slew of initiatives to promote tourism in the city

KOCHI: Installing a multi-purpose digital display screen for the tourists expected to throng the city in connection with the Volvo Ocean Race stopover here is being considered, District Collector M. Beena, who is also the chairperson of the District Tourism Promotion Council (DTPC), has said.

Talking to the Hindu, Ms. Beena said the plan was to erect the board in the vicinity of the port or the race village to be set up for the race slated to hit the shores here in December.

She said the proposal, however, was only in the drawing board and that detailed discussions need to be carried out before it was actually implemented.

Ms. Beena pointed at the need for finding sponsors for installing the facility.

Though the immediate purpose of the screen would be to help tourists by flashing information on the tourism destinations, transportation and accommodation facilities, in future it would be used also as a message board for disseminating alerts and messages of the police.

Meanwhile, the DTPC, in its efforts to promote lesser-known and new tourism destinations in the district, was planning to bring out promotional materials on such places.

All the 43 tourism clubs functioning in the educational institutions in the district were active and sent frequent reports on the scope of exploring the tourism potential of areas in their vicinities, I.G. Chandrababu, secretary, DTPC, said.

DTPC had already a couple of such projects from tourism clubs and was awaiting more such proposals to evaluate them collectively, he said.

The State Tourism Department brought out all the publicity and promotional materials on tourism.

As such there were no district specific materials prompting the DTPC to embark on such a mission. He said that DTPC had not received any major complaints from tourists.

Indira A., district tourist information officer, said that the successful completion of the Kerala Travel Mart had generated quite a lot of enquiries, especially on homestays, in the district.

She said that her office recommended diamond house, gold house or silver house homestays depending on the requirements and affordability of the tourists seeking information.

The categorisation of homestays was based on the facilities in offer.

“Of late there had been many enquiries seeking information on Kumbalanghi. Fort Kochi and Mattancherry also seem to be very popular with the tourists, especially foreign tourists,” she said.

Ms. Indira said that enquiries were more this year compared to last year.

She expected more enquiries on the nature village at Ezhattumukham in the coming days.

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