The ball has set rolling to provide the much-needed thrust to tourism sector which forms part of the seven missions constituted by the State government as part of its ‘Vision 2029’.
The seven missions include primary sector, social empowerment, knowledge and skill development, industry, infrastructure, urban development and services sector and tourism is an important component of the service sector mission. The thrust of the mission approach is to assist departments on pre-identified, specific, growth-promoting, large social and economic infrastructure projects which need inter-departmental coordination for its effective grounding. A select group of 25-30 stakeholders representing tourism and its allied sectors such as hospitality, travel agents, tour operators and officials from archaeology wing and Department of Culture recently met at Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, to chalk out an action plan. They worked on an outline of the mission document. “The tourism mission has been divided into eight sub-groups to find simpler ways of achieving goals. The sub-groups include Buddhist circuit, temple tourism, beach resorts, amusement parks, eco-tourism, medical tourism and MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferencing, Exhibitions) tourism. The members are divided in smaller teams and associated with each groups,” says K. Pattabhiram, who is heading the Buddhist circuit team. “In the three-day meet, we drafted the way forward by discussing threadbare as to what should be done to attract investments. Since the government does not have funds, most of these projects will come up on PPP mode and for that we need to attract investments,” says Mr. Pattabhiram. The Buddhist circuit team has already identified 14 Buddhist sites in AP. “We plan to visit all 14 places to assess the ground situation,” he adds.
