By Aafaque Hussain
SHILLONG: Meghalaya with all its scenic beauty and pleasant weather has been able to attract tourists from Assam and West Bengal and is now getting attention from travelers from other parts of the country. However, what hinders the tourism sector in the State is the lack of information and reviews from tourists about the State.
HolidayIQ, India’s largest travel community and holiday recommendation engine with 12 million members across cities is of the opinion that there is much more which needs to be explored in the picturesque State.
Speaking to The Shillong Times, founder and CEO of HolidayIQ, Hari Nair, said Shillong is a city which is researched the most after Sikkim but the problem is there is not much information about Meghalaya.
He said that in his engine, people who visit different areas give their reviews and more people need to give their reviews about the State since it would help a tourist visiting the State to get correct and actual information about the state, tourist places and hotels etc.
“We want local people to contribute with their reviews and suggestions which would only help in building the tourism sector of Meghalaya,” he said, adding that HolidayIQ subscribers had recently voted Shillong as ‘India’s favourite hill station’, under the category top tourism destinations and Shillong was given the privilege by the tourists through their reviews.
He also said that now people have started traveling from far off cities – Bangalore, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune whereas last year travelers were mostly from nearby Kolkata and Guwahati.
During his visit to Shillong recently, Nair met the local people and the officials from the Tourism department and sought their views and suggestions on how to make the information about Meghalaya available for tourists who intend to visit the State.
While stating that connectivity is a major challenge in the State and elsewhere in the North East region, he said people would only boost the tourism sector of the State by giving information about the State online.
As per the statistics of HolidayIQ engine, there is an increase of 24% in travelers travelling to Meghalaya this year as compared to last year.
The statistics also revealed that Shillong continues to top the list of six most visited destinations in Meghalaya with 67 per cent travelers visiting the capital city followed by Cherrapunjee with 15 per cent, Tura 6 per cent, Jowai 5 per cent, Baghmara 4 per cent and Nongpoh 3 per cent.
The statistics also said that 28 per cent of the people coming to Meghalaya are from Kolkata followed by New Delhi with 16 per cent, Guwahati 9 per cent, Mumbai 4 per cent, Bangalore 3 per cent, Hyderabad 2 per cent and Ahmedabad and Pune with 1 per cent, respectively.
As per the statistics of the HolidayIQ engine, Meghalaya is mostly preferred by families (40%) followed by single travelers (24%), groups (19%) and couples (17%).