New TN tourism policy to be announced in Oct

Chennai, Sep 27 (UNI) The Tamil Nadu Tourism Department's new policy, likely to be announced next month, will focus on tourism promotion and setting up linkages with other related departments in the state.

Explaining the core aspects of the new policy initiatives, tourism officials told told UNI here today that the policy would not only place Tamil Nadu prominently on the global tourism map but also help to woo more tourists into the state.

''The tourism department has received feedback from the heads of departments of various colleges and educational institutions, which has tourism as a subject, hoteliers and travel trade,'' the officials said.

They said a major component of the tourism initative was to give a fillip to 'bed and breakfast' accommodatin to attract more budget tourists.

According to information given by the officials, the department which had identified more than 100 such homes, mostly in Chennai, was preparing a new set of broad guidelines. Apart from this, the department would be launching a special promotional campaign on foreign television channels by spending Rs two crore with the aim to woo more foreign tourist to the state.

'Enchanting Tamil Nadu,' the brand of Tamil Nadu Tourism, would become more visible with a special campaign through the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Asia, Discovery and its network of channels, Animal Planet and Travel and Living, and National Geographic.

The Tourism department had given the green signal to BBC and steps were underway to complete the process of issuing orders for other global programmes.

UNI