Tourist circuits and destinations in the country are expected to get a boost during the twelfth plan, beginning next year, as schemes are being worked out to develop them on mission mode on the pattern of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), union minister for tourism Subodh Kant Sahay said yesterday.

"The main is to give a major boost to tourism and thereby generate more than three crore job opportunities during the next five year plan," he told newsmen after a meeting with state government and tourism stakeholders in Madhya Pradesh.

"JNNURM started with development activities in 63 districts. We are planning to take up 30 to 40 tourist circuits and destinations for fully developing them to meet all requirements of tourists," he said, adding that the project would require major funding to the tune of about Rs 200 to Rs 300 crore in each circuit to develop the required infrastructure.

Sahay said the ministry was also planning to identify some important destinations for development of integrated tourism parks under Private Public partnership (PPP) or Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) model. These tourism parks will be major tourism related features like hotels, convention centre, theme parks, water parks and so on, depending on the requirements.

Pointing out that these initiatives would lead to major requirement of skilled manpower in hospitality and tourism sector, the union minister said the ministry was also taking up a major skill development programme initiative under the scheme 'Hunar Se Rozgar Tak'.

Sahay said state governments had been asked to come up with plans to develop institutional infrastructure for skill development through broad-basing of hospitality education for which the Tourism ministry would provide assistance for starting new hospitality courses in universities, colleges, ITIs, polytechnics and even in schools.