People from Maharashtra love to visit Gujarat

Surat, Mar 5 (UNI) As much as 22 per cent of tourists to Gujarat are from Maharashtra, according to a report by Tourism Corporation of Gujarat.

The finding has prompted the Corporation to suggest that construction of the proposed Vadodara-Mumbai Express Highway may further boost the influx. South Gujarat, however, does not fare well in the overall tourism scenario in the state.

Saurashtra is the most attractive tourist destination with 40 per cent of the tourists visting it last year with Central/East Gujarat coming second with a 27 per cent tourist inflow. South Gujarat had only 13.97 per cent of the tourists visiting it last year. North Gujarat had a 15.44 per cent tourists inflow.

According to the report, last year, 2.16 per cent of the total tourists visited the bordering area of Kutch.

The total number of inbound tourists last year into the country was 234 million out of which 7.64 million visited Gujarat, accoprding to the report. The number of foreign tourists to Gujarat was low at 35,000 as against the total of 2.53 million foreign tourists visiting the country last year.

Gujarat Tourism Development Corporation (GTDC) officials at Surat say lack of package tours and lack of guest houses may be a deterring factor for attracting tourists to Surat.

''GTDC has fifteen major guest houses at fifteen tourist destinations in the state but there is no such guest house in Surat,'' admits GTDC senior tourist officer R N Rana. The nearest GTDC guest house from Surat is in Saputara, a hill station where other hotels also operate.

The report says 40.66 per cent of the tourists visit the state for business purposes while 28.18 per cent are visitors to religious places. Only 3.9 per cent of the total tourists visit the state for leisure, the report adds.

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