India to strengthen rural tourism

H S Rao
London, Nov 13 (PTI) India plans to strengthen its
rural tourism project so as to expose the country's unique
rural way of life to foreign visitors.

Describing the rural project as "responsible tourism",
Tourism Secretary Sujit Banerjee said: "This is a very
innovative rural tourism project which positions India's rural
way of life as a unique visitor experience."

"Now we are going into wellness, cruise, rural,
adventure and faith tourism," Banerjee told PTI.

He also said that the current global financial
downturn will not affect the burgeoning tourism industry in
the country.

"We are absolutely hopeful that we'll be able to
overcome the current economic downturn and have robust growth
rate in tourism," he said.

The Secretary said the Tourism Ministry will strive to
reduce hotel tariff and bring hospitality sector on par with
infrastructure sector.

"We have requested the hoteliers to reduce the tariff
by 10 to 15 percent and urged the Reserve Bank of India to
put the hospitality sector on par with the infrastructure
sector rather than the real estate sector to bring down rate
of interest for hospitality sector," Banerjee said.

He said the total requirement of rooms for tourists in
India is estimated at 2.5 lakh whereas "we have only 90,000
rooms throughout the country."

On assaults on foreign tourists, Banerjee termed the
incidents as "unfortunate" and said that all efforts would be
made to provide safety and security to foreign tourists.

Banerjee said India earned a foreign exchange worth
10.83 billion dollars in 2007 - an increase of 24.3 percent
over the previous year - from 5 million tourist arrivals.

"While the world tourism registered a 6.6 percent
growth in 2007, India posted a 14.3 percent growth," he said.

The Ministry is also developing important destinations
and circuits through Mega Projects.

Six tourist sites -- Agra, Varanasi, Gangtok,
Bhubaneswar, Aurangabad and Hyderabad are being developed
under the project. PTI HSR
AM