With the objective of stepping up tourism in south Tamil Nadu, which accounts for 41 per cent of the domestic and 23 per cent of the foreign tourists visiting the State, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) had submitted earlier this year to the State Government a study on ‘Development of Tourism Sector in Southern TN: A Strategic Road Map’ prepared this February by Madras Consultancy Group.
As per a report in The Hindu by R. Sairam, Tamil Nadu has long history and great culture dating back to at least over two millennia. It is sprinkled with an array of temples on a scale seldom seen elsewhere in the world and a heritage that is unique, which provides excellent scope for religious as well as heritage tourism.
The southern districts are also rich in religious and leisure tourism assets with tourist destinations classified as religious, leisure, adventure, eco, rural and medical tourism centres.
With the tourism season about to start in September, stakeholders in tourism sector said that this was the right time for the State Government to design an optimum strategy to ensure that Tamil Nadu had something to offer through the year rather than just during the season.
According to the Tourism Department, over 4.26 crore tourists visited important tourist centres in southern Tamil Nadu in 2010 with the tourist arrivals having more than trebled during 2005 to 2010 period.
To uphold this surging number, the study urged the Government to tackle problems like lack of infrastructure as well as inadequate promotional activities that have limited tourism growth in several other leisure, heritage and eco-tourism locations.
Growth must come from new tourism circuits and the optimum tourism strategy for the southern districts needs to emphasize on increasing tourist arrivals in leisure, heritage and other emerging circuits.
Considerable scope exists for promoting a Jain heritage circuit starting from Madurai.
Two forms of tourism have shown promise in the southern districts in recent years. They were the foreign students coming here to study culture and the latter being the huge Tamil diaspora especially from South East Asian countries keen to visit their ancestral places.
They also visited other places of their interest, especially temples, and villages in the surrounding areas. Shopping also was high on their agenda.
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