Tourists flock to Rajasthan to celebrate New Year

With New Year around the corner, hotels and sightseeing destinations are reporting a big boom in the desert state of Rajasthan.

According to sources, tourist arrivals are so high that finding a room in a hotel is getting difficult.

"There has been a big rush of mainly domestic tourists to cities like Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Udaipur, Pushkar and Jodhpur, to name a few," said Sobhan Singh, manager with a Jaipur based travel agency that deals in inbound tourists.

"This rush has started from December 25 and is to continue till January 1-2 at least," he said.

"Look at Jaipur, on Thursday alone over 12,000 tourists visited Amber Fort....out of this 9,000 were domestic," Singh said.

"Similar scenes are being reported from other cities in the state," he said

"Almost all the big and leading and even budget hotels are reporting good business especially from December 25-January 2. Though before this period business was affected due to demonetisation," said Akhilesh Sharma, a tour operator.

"Domestic tourists are much more than foreign this time period. Majority of bookings in hotels this year are coming from neighbouring states like Delhi, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat to name a few," said R.S.Rathore, general manager of a five star hotel in Jaipur.

"One should forget about getting discounts in hotels at least till the first week of January. On the other hand one should be happy even to get a room," Sobhan Singh said.

According to travel industry pundits, good air, rail and road connectivity and peaceful atmosphere coupled with lots of sightseeing places and shopping are some of the reasons attracting tourists to these Rajasthan cities.

On an average Rajasthan attracts over 12 lakh foreign and over 2 crore domestic tourists every year.

--IANS

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