GUWAHATI: The Assam government has lined up a slew of tourism development initiatives in the coming year, including a second ropeway project in the state from the foothills of Kamakhya to the top of the historic temple here.
“The tendering process for the Kamakhya ropeway project will begin in a month or two while the trial run of the Guwahati-North Guwahati ropeway project will be held by December this year,” Assam tourism minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma announced here on Tuesday.
A star hotel in Majuli, the world’s largest river island, and infrastructure renovation in and around Kaziranga National Park are also among the initiatives to be taken in the coming year.
Stating that the state government’s core competency lay in playing the role of a facilitator of the requisite infrastructure and a policy administrator, Sarma said the tourism budget has been substantially hiked this year for taking up aggressive publicity campaigns, facilitating construction of hotels, creating wayside amenities, providing subsidy to hoteliers, among others.
“Our job is to promote our tea estates, wildlife parks, building roads and facilitating power to these areas. We have to transform our role to be a part of the overall tourism development, which is in sync with our tourism policy. Not just our hotels but if those in the private sector also come up owing to our initiatives it would mean that we have facilitated growth,” he said.
The annual report (2017-18) of Assam Tourism Development Corporation (ATDC) was released at the programme. The profit (before tax) of the corporation has almost doubled from Rs 2.24crore in 2016-17 to Rs 4.22crore in 2017-18.
An amount of Rs 6.30crore was released as severance package among 72 employees of Brahmaputra Ashok Hotel (earlier a joint property of Centre and Assam), which the state government has taken over for creation of a circuit house-cum guest-house-cum convention centre. This the state government claims is the highest VRS package so far.
“We had released our tourism policy last year and this year we have allotted a greater share of funds in the budget for the Assam Tourism Development Corporation (ATDC) to implement the policy,” Sarma said. The state government has allocated Rs 89 crore for developing tourism infrastructure this year. “But we are trying to get an externally-aided project from World Bank for developing tourism infrastructure, which would be to the tune of Rs 730crore,” the minister said.
“Over the past couple of years, thanks to our new initiatives, we have managed to get a traction and the results are showing. For instance, the the average off-season hotel occupancy rates in the state have increased by 20 per cent during 2017-18 as against the previous year. Besides, with both inbound and outbound tourism showing a positive increase, the message that Assam is now a more welcoming state is clear,” he said.