Hot spring near Tattapani to be restored: CM

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh today said the government would explore the possibility of restoring the hot water spring near Tattapani in Mandi district by boring hot water beds.
He said natural hot sulphur springs at Tattapani got submerged in the Koldam reservoir and necessity was felt to find an alternative for restoring the hot baths.
For this purpose transfer of about two bighas of land from Kol Dam to Himachal Pradesh Government had been taken up with the dam's higher authorities for final approval, the Chief Minister said in a meeting of Board of Directors (BoD) of the Tourism Development Corporation here today.

In this regard, the engineers of HPTDC had visited the office of Kol Dam authorities at Slapper and the approval for transfer of land was awaited.
The outcome would be placed in the next meeting of BoD, stated the Managing Director of the Corporation.
On suggestion of the BoD members, it was decided that the rates in various tourism units of the state should be made area and location-specific. They said it has been noticed that the rates in various tourism cafes and hotels in districts were equivalent to rates prevailing in Shimla.

Chief Minister advised that the Corporation should prepare the hotel-specific stickers to be fixed on the tourist vehicles and buses as a part of marketing strategy.

He said competent staff should be deputed in marketing offices and steps be taken to ensure off-line bookings also.
The Chief Minister stressed on promotion of hospitality staff for which he directed to frame specific policy.
In case of lack of policy, a 'Trade Test' can be done to assess their efficiency, he suggested and asked the department to prepare a proposal within a month regarding promotion of utility staff.
The Corporation suffered major losses because of huge expenditure on its transportation services, said the Chief Minister, suggesting that the issue could be taken up with the state transport authorities for taking over the HPTDC buses.

The BoD also gave its approval for revised revenue and capital budget of the Corporation for 2014-15 and proposed revenue and the capital budget for 2015-16.
The CM said the performance of the Corporation in 2014-15 was "quite good" as it had earned operational profit of Rs 251.94 lakh and net profit of Rs 40.49 lakh after providing depreciation to the tune of Rs 211.45 lakh.