Spurt in summer temperatures due to climate change, concerns of safety and lack of basic amenities are perhaps taking away the charm of Kerala’s prime tourism centre Munnar, known often as the Kashmir of the South in the tourism circles, if the steady fall in tourist arrivals since the start of the current decade is any indication.
Munnar, Kerala’s most popular hill resort known for its vast stretches of tea plantations, used to be one of the rare destinations in the South that lured tourists from the domestic as well as foreign sectors in the peak of summer but last summer was a disappointment due to the inhospitable heat.
The Tourism Department’s programmes for monsoon tourism this year also met with considerable failure as heavy rains that lashed the State in the first week of August wreaked havoc in Munnar town as well as on the access routes to the destination which left many tourists stranded in the hill resort for days.
However, the most important factor that is affecting Munnar’s tourism operations negatively is perhaps the law and order problems, a new trend in the region. Over 30 cases of attacks by local people on both domestic and foreign tourists in Munnar and around have been reported during the past one year alone.
“All this is affecting tourism in Kerala’s tea country,” said Joseph, a hotel manager in Munnar town. “Rains this year have been a big factor but that was unstoppable and accidental. Even otherwise, there is a perceptible tendency among the travelers to exempt Munnar from their itinerary. That is what our business associates in other destinations say,” he said.
As many as 4,26,61 travelers including 8,972foreign tourists had visited Munnar during the season of 2010-11, according to official statistics. This number fell to just over 3,84,000 in the 2011-12 season. The arrivals dropped to 1,49,425 in the first quarter of the current year, suggesting that the fall in arrivals is not just accidental.
Munnar used to see over 2,000 tourists flowing in per day in the peak of summer but this dropped to less than 800 last summer. The overall fall in arrivals during the summer months was 40 percent, according to tourism circles. The main reason for this was reportedly the extraordinarily high temperatures witnessed at the otherwise cool hill resort.
“There is no escaping the fact that the numbers are coming down every passing year. There has been a 20 percent fall in arrivals in the past three years and there is no sign of the business picking up though the season has begun. In financial terms, the drop could be as big as 40 percent,” Joseph opined.
However, the biggest threat to tourism business in Munnar presently is the frequent attacks on travelers from the part of the local residents. Police officials secretly admit this fact but express inability to stop such incidents totally in the absence of sufficient personnel. A minimum of 30 such incidents have been reported in Munnar in the past one year.
“It is a fact that tourism has led to a huge rise in prices. Most restaurants are now off limits for the ordinary Munnar natives, subsisting mainly on tea plantation jobs. This could be creating an anti-tourist sentiment in the people. But the problem is that they would be worse off if tourism business collapses,” said a Department of Tourism official.
Police officials say that they do not have enough personnel to engage on tourism duty, especially in places like Mattupetty and Kundala, outside Munnar town, which see heavy tourist presence in the season. Most of the attacks against tourists are being reported from places like this.
The other factors that create an aversion among travelers to Munnar are the ever-increasing room rent, lack of clean budget restaurants that serve hygienic food, problems of vehicle parking and lack of good public comfort stations. “It is up to the Government to take care of such things but there is no such effort,” said an hotelier.