Kerala to woo more foreign visitors

New Delhi, May 14 (UNI) Kerala is all set to widen its foreign tourists base, targeting the affluent Western European travellers this year under its high-voltage "God's Own Country" campaign.

Setting a fresh agenda for the year, Kerala Tourism Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan told UNI here today that the state would launch "an aggressive campaign in Italy, Spain and Switzerland this year as there are feedback that more tourists may be wooed in from there." Mr Balakrishnan, earlier, inaugurated a "Road Show" of Kerala Tourism, highlighting its new "Dream Season" campaign to promote domestic tourism during the state's lean tourism months of April-September.

Mr Balakrishnan said as many as 428,534 foreign tourists visited Kerala during 2006 with United Kingdom, Germany and France accounting for the majority of them.

The foreign tourist base could be widened further if a new market for Kerala's tourism products were developed in more foreign countries. "Accordingly, the focus this year would be on Italy, Spain and Switzerland." Tourism Secretary V Venu said ''the 'Dream Season' campaign launched through a "micro-website" www.keralatourism.org/dreamseason last month had started yielding results with more domestic tourists already showing interests in special packages offered by the hospitality industry for the months up to September.'' "We hope to increase the domestic tourist arrival by 20 per cent this year," he said, adding that the dream season campaign would help the hotels and resorts to improve the rate of accommodation during the lean seasons which earlier stood at 30 to 40 per cent.

As many as 6.2 million domestic tourists visited Kerala in 2006.

Dr Venu said the dream season campaign, under which 131 packages are offered by 150 properties, was launched this year as part of the government's effort to make Kerala a "round-the-year" destination.

He said several new initiatives were being launched to promote the hitherto neglected Malabar region in northern Kerala.

"We will promote unseen, unknown Kerala so as to ensure that tourist spots in the entire country are promoted uniformly. This will also improve the state's carrying capacity of tourists against the background of the number of domestic and foreign tourists growing by 15 to 20 per cent every year." In this context, Dr Venu said, the government would give special encouragement to private entrepreneurs to set up hotels in lesser known tourism spots but with high potential.

One of the proposed initiatives was to enhance economic and social responsibility of stakeholders in tourism.

"The idea is to establish sustainable economic and social linkages with the local people by generating jobs for them with creating any strain on the environment." UNI