HimVani
Shimla: Taking a small but very significant step in making Himachal Pradesh more accessible to tourists, the state tourism department has finally decided to have a call centre to provide free tourist information to visitors. Stating this, commissioner, tourism, and managing director of Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation, Ram Subhagh Singh, while addressing private tour and travel operators in New Delhi, said the state government would also honour tour operators who contributed maximum business to HPTDC hotels and units.
“The commission for travel and tour operators has been increased to 15% from 10% to make HP tourism book more lucrative and competitive with states that have already enhanced the commission,” he said. Singh said the government has decided to set up Tourism Advisory Council and persons of eminence in travel and tourism would be nominated to the council to help and guide the government on tourism related issue.
He also agreed to the idea of setting up ‘Dilli Haat’ type centres in all important tourist destinations of the state to promote local handicrafts, art and cuisine.
These are routine statements which appear before commencement of every tourist season. The previous year also the then commissioner had talked about call centre and HPTDC website in Chinese language but nothing had happened till date.
There was another statement by the Commissioner (not reported on Him Vani) that the state would target 94 lakh tourists this year. Now this is a great number but where is the infrastucture to support these arrivals? These statements look good at travel fairs, this time it was SATTE, I beleive.
HPTDC hotels require major renovations and increase in room inventory to cater more tourist arrivals.
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