At a time when most of the States are focusing on unexplored tourists’ destinations, the Andhra Pradesh Government has decided to promote existing tourists cities like Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada in a big way to boost its coffer. The Sunrise State was ranked the 3rd most visited State in the country by domestic tourists in 2016.
The industry in the State is growing at 25 per cent to 30 per cent annually. “Our target to increase the domestic and foreigners footfalls is from 15 crore and 2.64 lakh in 2016 to 17 crore and 3.70 lakh respectively next year. To achieve this we have chalked out ambitious plans,” said State Tourism Principal Secretary Mukesh Kumar Meena, who was here to attend the third edition of tourism investor meet organised by FICCI.
“The emphasis will be on developing five important tourism hubs (Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupati, Rajah-mundry-Kakinada and Sri-sailam-Nagarjuna Sagar) by 2020, and all other district headquarters as tourism hubs by 2029,” he said as he shared the expansion and tourism strengthening plans of the State with The Pioneer.
Meena further said that plans are afoot to add 33 hotels, including major global and domestic brands, in the State at a total investment of Rs 2,400 crore to strengthen tourism development. “By this fiscal, 1,000 rooms will come up while 1,500 are proposed for next fiscal with five star hotels like Park, Raddisson Blue and Hilton, taking a lead in this direction.”
The State has set a target of Rs 10,000 crore investments by 2020. Even as major share of tourism earnings-about 60 to 65 per cent — currently comes from pilgrimage tourism, the State Government is also looking towards promoting other avenues such as water sports, leisure tourism, caravan tourism, rural tourism and adventure tourism to name a few to further augment tourists inflow.
“Blessed with varied and enchanting natural resources, a long coastline of 974 km and 35,000 square kilometre of forests with tiger reserves, wildlife and bird sanctuaries, hill stations we have identified 13 such related tourism activities where we think we should upon to give fillip to tourism sector,” he added.
In a bid to match investor expectations with the State’s resoluteness of intent, Andhra Pradesh has announced an array of incentives to investors for taking up tourism infrastructure projects and services such as a fixed land rental of 2 per cent of basic market value for investors, reduction in VAT slabs to 5 per cent for hotels and resorts, and a 3 year tax holiday on luxury and entertainment tax among others.