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Gujarat Tourism said it will spend Rs 635 crore in developing tourism-related infrastructure over the next three years as it expects more visitors and aims to increase the share of tourism revenue in the state GDP, which on Sunday is only about 1 per cent.
"Various Government departments, along with Gujarat Tourism Corporation, will be investing over Rs 635 crore in infrastructure build-up over the next three years," Principal Secretary (Tourism) Vipul Mittra said while announcing the forthcoming Rann festival and the international kite festival.
"As far as tourist arrivals are concerned, we hope to receive 2 crore people this year, up from 1.8 crore last year. Of this we expect 4 lakh to be foreign visitors, up form 3.2 lakh last year, Tourism Commissioner and Gujarat Tourism Managing Director Sanjay Kaul said.
Mittra further said as part of efforts at building infrastructure, the Government recently set up a company, GuTops (Gujarat Tourism Opportunities), in association with infra finance firm IL&FS, in which both are equal partners.
Another initiative in this regard is GujTour, the entity through which private equity players will be pumping in money to build infrastructure. Under the second initiative, already 37 hotel and resort projects, including a couple by the Taj Group, have been cleared, Mittra said.
Mittra said the department will be spending around Rs 2 crore to promote the Rann Utsav (December 9-January 15). Gujarat Tourism annually spend Rs 50 crore on marketing. Kaul said the Kutch region abounds with beaches, wildlife and ancient palaces and monuments and the Rann Utsav is the celebration of this.
The kite festival will be held form January 10-15. It attracts visitors from Japan, Italy, UK, Canada, Brazil, US, Indonesia, Australia, Singapore, France, China among others. The third event is the global bird catchers conference from January 19-22 in Ahmedabad.
PTI
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