India Tourism launches "Home Stay" scheme for foreign tourists

New Delhi, Oct 18 (UNI) In a major effort to overcome acute hotel room shortage and to empower the women, the India Tourism today launched a new scheme which enables foreign tourists to stay with an Indian family to experience local customs and traditions and relish authentic ethnic cuisine at affordable rates.

The unique scheme called "Incredible India Bed and Breakfast Establishments" seeks to provide comfortable homestay facilities of standardised world class services to the tourists.

Such facilities would be categorised as "Silver" and "Gold," depending upon the degree of comforts provided.

Union Tourism Minister Ambika Soni, while launching the scheme, said a set of guidelines have been issued to regulate the participating homesteads and make the effort a great success.

"This will be a unique opportunity for house owners, especially the housewives, because they will get an opportunity to earn extra income while remaining at home," Ms Soni said.

She said the Tourism Ministry would give adequate publicity to these facilities along with providing professional training to the recognised house owners under the capacity building programme.

The houses, once registered with Tourism Ministry, will be promoted through e-commerce platform of Incredible India website.

This e-commerce platform will provide travel agents, tour operators, airlines, state tourism corporations and most importantly small and medium entrepreneurs like bed and breadfast suppliers, an opportunity to avail twin benefits of promotion and publicity through Incredible India platform as well as creation of secure payment gateway for online booking of their respective products.

Ms Soni said the classification for B and B Establishment will be given only in those cases where the owner of the establishment along with his family is physically residing in the same establishment and letting out minimum one room and maximum five rooms.

The quality of facilities and services would be evaluated by the Regional Classification Committee. Due preference will be accorded to the homes, which are able to provide Indian experience by way of Indian decor, authentic and exotic Indian cuisine.

Those homesteads which want to be enrolled under the B and B Establishment scheme would have to register with the ministry of tourism through the local offices by paying a fee of Rs 5,000 for Gold and Rs 3,000 for Silver classification.

The classification will be valid for two years from the date of issue of orders.

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