Government to prepare Master Plan for tourism development

Shimla, Mar 26 (UNI) Himachal Pradesh Government will consider preparation of a master plan for planned tourism development in public-private participation in different tourism related activities in the state.

Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal, while inaugurating the three-day international conference on backpacker tourism, ''ATLAS Backpacker Mobilities- An Expert Conference'', here today, said that his government would soon be coming up with a detailed tourism development master plan to harness the available natural potential to the optimum with ecological safeguards and create quality infrastructure to meet the requirements of tourists of different economic levels.

Mr Dhumal said that the state would explore possibilities to attract the young, enthusiastic students to explore the state and to remain in close contact with the nature, culture, tradition and food habits of rural Himachal.

He said that the department would get in touch with all the prominent educational institutions, within and outside the country, especially public schools and prepare an attractive package for the school children so that whatever they had been reading in books, other publicity literature and watching in the films was personally visited.

It would definitely be the most memorable and learning experience to the young citizens who would know about the life style, food habits, culture and tradition of hilly people, he added.

He said that the state had been blessed with different climate conditions, which cater to almost all types of tourists and needed to be exploited by creating basic infrastructural facilities.

He added that the students would also be taken to hydroelectric projects to learn about the hydropower generation process to update their knowledge.

The Chief Minister said that backpacker tourism was emerging as a global tourism phenomenon as large number of youth and children packed with rucksacks explore different destinations the world over.

Although low spending, the backpacker tourism required basic infrastructural facilities, which would be created in different areas of the state in a phased manner and would form part of the proposed Tourism Master Plan.

UNI XC AS MMS2000