Upgrading Infrastructure Must To Enhance Tourism In Himachal

By: Sep 16th, 2017 12:21 am

NEWSVijay Sharma

(The writer is based at Himmar, Hamirpur)

Himachal government earns revenue worth several crores from tourist influx, but the state seriously lacks tourists facilities. Tourism contributes to about seven percent to the state gross domestic product (GDP) that can easily be increased to more than 10% to 15%. The turbulent atmosphere and terrorism prevailing in Jammu and Kashmir is constantly tilting tourists’ inclination towards Himachal Pradesh.

The peaceful environment coupled with beautiful landscapes inadvertently grabs the attention of tourists towards this part of world. But they feel cheated once they reach different tourists spots in this hilly state due to lazy administrative attitude and corruption prevailing in all spheres of life. Himachal’s tourism is failing to meet its potential because of hotel industry’s fractiousness, parking problems and increased incidents of landslides. Hotels in Himachal are costlier than even those in metropolitan cities of India. Why does not the Himachal government categorise hotels as per facility provided by them and set the rates accordingly? The government claims that the influx of national and international tourists to Himachal has increased to a greater extent. But it will not take much time to reverse the phenomenon once peace is restored in Jammu and Kashmir.  Tourist influx to Himachal has increased threefold in last one decade. About 71.36 lakh tourists visited Himachal in 2005 that increased to about 1.84 crore in 2016 and this figure might touch two crore mark by the end of this year. According to government figures, there are about 70,869 rooms available in 2604 hotels and 2137 rooms in 787 home stay schemes. Besides this few Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation hotels and rest houses of different departments are also linked to tourism. But the increasing influx of tourists demands about 50,000 more hotel rooms in coming time to check hoteliers fractiousness too. The government has constructed a number of helipads in its endeavour to boost tourism. At present a total of 63 helipads are in working condition and approval to construction of five more helipads has already been given. The government spends a hefty amount for maintenance of these helipads but these serves more as launching pads for Chief Minister and other ministers and are hardly used to boost tourism. The successive state governments have not done much to beautify tourists places to attract tourists and are relying purely on what has been bestowed to the state by nature. A little attention to tourism sector can solve many problems like unemployment, revenue extraction etc. In fact tourists attention can be grabbed only by strengthening the spine of tourism.


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