Kerala - often referred to as God's own country - has drawn up ambitious plans to increase foreign tourist arrivals by 100 per cent and domestic tourist arrivals by 50 per cent in the next five years, according to K. Raj Kumar, the Deputy Director of the Kerala tourism department.
He was addressing the media here on Thursday after a road show was conducted to promote Kerala as a tourist destination. He said "at present the State annually draws over a million foreign tourists and over a crore domestic tourists. In 2016, a total of 10,31,000 international tourists visited the State as against 10,91,000 in 2017. In 2016, 1.31 crore domestic tourists visited the State as against 1.46 crores in 2017."
Raj Kumar said the State was focusing on adventure tourism and it had taken up a number of innovative initiatives in recent times to promote tourism. Kerala Blog Express is one such event which brings together distinguished international bloggers from more than 30 countries and they are taken to various tourist spots in the State to write about them in their blogs. The fifth edition of the annual event begins on March 12this year.
Kerala Travel Mart, a four-day event, begins on Sept 27 to bring together the business fraternity and entrepreneurs behind the State's tourism products and services.
The State is going all out to woo domestic tourists as well and organising partnership meets in all the important towns and cities across the nation.