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Kerala will go for timely alterations in its Responsible Tourism (RT) policy to make the activities more people-centric to further strengthen the State’s travel and tourism industry, said Tourism Minister PA Mohamed Riyas.
Expert suggestions to accomplish this aim will be central to the first-ever Global Responsible Tourism Summit, he said, inaugurating the four-day event at Kumarakom.
The government’s RT Mission will spread its activities to entire Kerala by introducing responsible tourism practices in all tourist accommodation units across the State. “We must showcase our responsible, experiential, rural and sustainable tourism initiatives to increase tourist inflow,” he said
Emphasising that Kerala’s tourism activities should be eco-friendly, Riyas said the four-day summit is set to work towards measures that will empower women in the State.
Environment-friendly activities
Pointing out that Kerala has already decided to convert RT Mission as a society for the smooth functioning of the initiative, Riyas said the government has decided to revise its 2008 Declaration on RT and scale up its environment-friendly activities across the State.
“We want to ensure resilient tourism activities across the State and create a network of practitioners and promoters of global RT. We need to gain more knowledge from RT practices across the globe, for which we are considering the formation of a global-level association,” he said. “Strengthening RT is going to bring a drastic change in our tourism industry and raise the State’s tourism to a new height.”
STREET and PEPPER
The RT Mission is marching towards establishing 100 per cent structured responsible tourism destinations through endeavours such as STREET (Sustainable, Tangible Responsible Experiential Ethnic Tourism) and PEPPER (People’s participation for participatory planning and empowerment through responsible tourism) that have won global recognition, Riyas added.
Minister for Cooperation & Registration VN Vasavan highlighted the need for coordinated efforts to ensure the success of RT.
“Initially, in 2007, when RT was mooted, the idea received a poor response. There was even resistance from certain quarters,” he recalled. “Slowly, we won the confidence of the people and RT won public acceptance. We still have a long way to go.”
Kerala Tourism Principal Secretary KS Srinivas said RT has been the State’s USP in tourism beyond its nature and hospitality. “Earlier, we looked for examples from other places; today, the world is looking at Kerala for good tourism models,” he added.
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