Adverse travel advisories by different countries robbed the North East of foreign visitors and states there should improve their image to counter this. "We lose out on a huge tourist potential because of the travel advisories from foreign embassies," Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma asid.

"The North East is perceived as a disturbed area in general by foreign embassies present in India, and therefore, tourists coming to India and are willing to travel to the NE are advised not to do so," he said on the sidelines of a workshop on Avenues for Entrepreneurship in Tourism here.

The chief minister said, states like Meghalaya, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh had small pockets of troubled areas which were blown out of proportion. The chief minister said that each state should showcase that it was a safe destination for tourists and ensure that embassies knew the ground reality and could give credible travel advisories to interested travellers.

He said he came to know about 'adverse' travel advisories when he attended a program in Switzerland last year. "A tour operator in Geneva told me that his country's embassy had issed a travel advisory that the North East is not safe for his clients,," he said.