Thiruvananthapuram: To tap the immense possibilities of promoting Kerala as 'adventure and activity based tourism' destination, the state tourism department will focus on developing new projects and will encourage new investors, tourism minister Kadakampally Surendran said.
Inaugurating a workshop organized by the department to give shape to its tourism policy, he said tourists coming to the state just for sightseeing have dwindled. Hence it was time to cater to the needs of activity and adventure based tourism from. While the primary focus of the workshop was to find new possibilities to take adventure tourism forward in Kerala, the minister stressed on the need to work closely and in coordination with the forest department to realize the goals in the adventure tourism sector.
Kerala Tourism plans to re-brand itself and find new avenues to take the sector forward in order to double the tourist arrivals by 2021. Keeping this in mind the department will now start a new 'tourist circuit' based out of North Kerala and shift focus from areas it was concentrating all this while to specifically give thrust to adventure tourism with the sole aim of attracting more youngsters to the state, a press release said.
Reiterating the state's commitment to responsible tourism, he said the government would unveil its plans in the tourism policy, to be tabled in the coming assembly session. Environmental protection and raising the living standards among the local population are the two primary objectives that the government would focus on as part of responsible tourism.
The government will encourage and support new investors in the tourism field and had called up more such close associations to take the sector in Kerala to the next level. The principal secretary, Kerala Tourism, Dr V Venu, who also spoke, said cooperation and coordination with the forest department are of paramount importance for the growth of adventure tourism and that this could be achieved without violating any of the existing environmental laws.
Till date Ayurveda and water-bodies of southern Kerala had been the biggest marketing tools before the tourism department and the time has come to shift focus to adventure tourism, but for that, there is definitely a need to change the mindset of people towards adventure tourism, he said. Tourism director P Bala Kiran said that for the first time in the history of Kerala Tourism the numbers of in-bound foreign tourists have swelled beyond one million and domestic tourists arrivals have touched 1.38 crores.
He also stressed on the need for the department and the tourism industry to closely cooperate to evolve new products that could make a difference to the sector at large. There was also need to find new avenues in the sector to double tourist arrivals in Kerala in the coming years, he said.
The workshop was held with aim of creating a road map for developing adventure tourism in the next six months. During the same period, the department would also make a record of every establishment working in the adventure sector and also form a regulatory authority to run adventure tourism in the state.
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