Kerala hopes to increase tourists to state by 2020

The Kerala Tourism Department is hoping to increase arrival of both domestic and foreign tourists to the state by 2020 under its new policy, a senior official said on Tuesday.

"As per our new tourism policy, we are targeting to achieve 50 per cent growth in domestic tourist arrivals into Kerala and 100 per cent in the case of foreign tourists," Deputy Director Anil V.S. told reporters here.

He said Tamil Nadu is the number one tourist market for Kerala. In 2018, about 13.98 lakh people from Tamil Nadu visited Kerala while the number of foreign tourists stood at about 10.96 lakh.

Anil said about 1.56 crore domestic tourists had visited Kerala in 2018 and Kerala Tourism is organising business-to-business (B2B) meets across the country to increase tourist traffic to the state.

He said one of the tourist attractions this year will be the Champions Boat League.

According to him, the Nehru Trophy boat race will be in August and the boat race would conclude with the boat race for the Presidential Trophy.

Anil said the recent protest against the entry of women into Sabarimala temple has also not impacted the tourist inflow in a major way.

--IANS

vj/vd