Kerala to Hold Investors Meet For ‘Visit Kerala 2015’

As part of its efforts to boost the ‘Visit Kerala 2015’ initiative, Kerala Tourism will hold an investors’ meet this year to mobilize money for setting up home stays, villas, and food courts.

Kerala Tourism minister Minister A P Anil Kumar said “The arrival of the home stays had changed the scene and we want more home stays, villas, and food courts in the State. The investors’ meet would mobilize resources locally”.

It would be a small-scale investors’ meet to ensure participation of the local people who can invest and contribute to the development of the tourism sector. “We are looking for local investors and the focus will be on promoting Responsible Tourism initiatives. Promotional activities to attract large- scale investment in the tourism sector will go along,” he said.

The number of rooms in various class of hotels and classified home stays across the State had touched 75,000 in 2014 compared to 40,000 in 2010, he said. The tourist arrivals to the State in the last quarter of 2014 had been affected due to the avian influenza. There was no major dip in the tourist arrivals in the first three quarters and the official tourist arrival statistics is being compiled by the department.

Replying to queries, the Tourism Minister said the seaplane project was a dream project of the government and discussions were on for commencing the operations. The hop-on hop-off bus service to be introduced in the capital will be operated by the Tourism Department.

Kerala had been tagged as a high-end destination and this coupled with the high airfare in the domestic sector had created hurdles to tourists and a section of stakeholders in the industry.