Mumbai: 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
