Expand Tourism Potential To New Locations

Vijay Sharma

(The writer is based at Hamirpur)

Eco-tourism includes different activities like trekking, bird watching, boating, biodiversity research and wildlife reserves exploration etc. There are immense possibilities for eco-tourism in Himachal Pradesh. But the state government’s plans and policies are yielding no result in this perspective due to lack of effective management. A different society has been constituted for eco-tourism in Himachal, but nobody knows how much positive results this society has succeeded to achieve.

Himachal has emerged as favourite destination for North Indian tourists due to tense and violent atmosphere prevailing in Kashmir valley. But maximum of tourists prefer to visit Shimla, Kullu-Manali and Dharamshala. However, such tourist spots can be identified and developed in almost all the districts of Himachal. But ironically, no government has taken concrete steps in this direction. Stay in hotels is costly in Himachal Pradesh as compared to metropolitan cities despite digitisation and stiff competition in tourism industry here.

Besides this huge crowd of tourists gathers in Shimla only during summers. And the hotel owners charges exorbitant rates for accommodation, parking of vehicles and other facilities. A code of conduct should be applied for hotels in order to attract tourists besides providing the tourism police facility to the tourists. Eco-tourism is similar to adventure tourism. But where adventure tourism is thrilling, eco-tourism puts emphasis on satisfaction of tourists.

The state government has approved new policy for eco-tourism in February month this year. But until now private sector has not shown much interest in it. To give impetus to eco-tourism, the government has given responsibility to DFO level officer of forest department and has asked forest department to ensure availability of rest houses of forest department for tourists. But maximum of these rest houses are serving home district level officers only. Even on official websites half baked knowledge about rest houses is available. There are immense possibilities of eco-tourism in Himachal, which could add its share to the state exchequer. But ironically despite many attractions available for tourists in hill state, its full potential has not been honed due to lack of facilities.

New tourist areas should be developed with the help from private sector. The state government in its new tourism development policy has emphasised the participation of local community. Besides this, emphasis has also been put on the idea of environment friendly locations and hotels. But all this is still in paper work stage. The bitter truth is that this project has not yielded much result for Himachal till yet.

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