Kerala Tourism to organise special food festival in Ahmedabad

Ahmedabad

The Tourism department of Kerala, where tourists from Gujarat makes the largest domestic traveler’s chunk with 30 to 35 percent of such annual influx, has planned a special food festival in Ahmedabad as part of their ‘Visit Kerala Year’ program to attract even larger number of ‘quality tourists’ from this western state.

Talking to newsmen here today, Deputy Director of the tourism department of Kerala, Mr. Nandkumar K P said, ‘Gujarat, with 30 to 35 percent of overall Kerala’s annual domestic tourist’s portion, was a big contributor to his state’s GDP of which tourism has the largest share of 10 to 11 percent. We call Gujaratis ‘quality tourists’ owing to their better capacity to spend.’

‘Now we want to further increase the numbers of such quality tourists and are going to organise a special food festival in the city of Ahmedabad soon. Though 65 to 70 percent of our cuisine is non-vegetarian and fish based yet our food festival here would highlight most or our vegetarian items. The general perception is that the Gujaratis don’t like Kerala food but that is not always true. We have improved a lot and even many of the strictly veg Jain tourists from Gujarat appreciate our food there,’ he said.

We are celebrating the period between April 2015 to 2016 as ‘Visit Kerala Year’ and as a part of it the food festivals would be organised in all metro cities. The first one has already been held in Mumbai and was a success, he said.

Talking about other initiatives to better the tourist facilities in his state the Deputy Director said the government has re-started the sea plane services to quickly take the tourists to far flung backwaters areas like Kumarakum in Alappuzha, also known as Alleppey from the three airports in Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode and Kochi. ‘The services which were started last year were hampered due to protests from the fishermen. We have now sorted it out with proper negotiation and the sea plane service with the help of two private companies is all set to resume,’ he said.

Mr. Nandakumar said the domestic tourism in the state was up by 7.71 percent (from 1085788 to 11695411) while the number of foreign tourists increased by 7.60 percent (858143 to 923366)last year. Increase in the foreign exchange earnings was 15.07 percent and the total revenue of the tourism department was Rs. 24885.44 crore.

‘Aggressive campaigns like trade fairs and road shows that target potential travelers in big traditional markets for Kerala will be conducted in The UK, France and Germany while leveraging the increased air connectivity, a focused Ayurveda and monsoon campaign will be held in the Middle East where 90 percent of the diaspora are from Kerala,’ he said.

– DeshGujarat