In order to woo more number of tourists from Orissa to Kerala, the Kerala Tourism Department organized a partnership meet on August 4th in Bhubaneshwar which provided a perfect platform for the tour operators of Kerala to interact with their Orissa counterparts.
Deputy Director of Kerala’s Department of Tourism, PG Suresh Kumar said “The event is part of a 10-city tour whose effort is to tap the tier 11 cities to persuade the tourists from those areas to visit Kerala.”
The 10-city tour has been organized following the success of the 11-city partnership meet undertaken last year that yielded rich dividends in terms of higher number of domestic tourists to counter the drop in the international tourists due to global economic slump. Kerala popularly known as ‘God’s own country’ registered a total of 5.5 lakh international tourists, 78 lakhs tourists from India and over 1 crore pilgrims in the year 2009.
Kerala tourism whose official travel website, www.keralatourism.org had been recently selected as the best website for the prestigious award ‘PATA (Pacific Asia Travel Association) Gold Award 2010’ has also introduced various concepts like farm tourism, responsible tourism (a euphemism for eco-tourism) and cultural tourism.
