At least four among the erstwhile 10 districts received higher tourist footfall than the State Capital and the neighbouring Rangareddy districts during the last couple of years. The information provided in the statistical year book 2017 says so.
The twin cities and Rangareddy districts received 95.98 lakh domestic tourists during the year 2015 and the number was 1.09 crore during 2016. The erstwhile undivided Karimnagar district reported a tourist inflow of 3.09 crore during 2015 followed by 1.63 crore in Adilabad and 1.13 crore in Khammam the same year, marking a significantly high inflow as compared to Hyderabad and Rangareddy. The tourist inflow into Warangal too was no less at 98.09 lakh the same year.
According to the year book, a total of 1.57 crore tourists visited Warangal during 2016 followed by Karimnagar with 1.19 crore. The twin cities and Rangareddy was placed third with an inflow of 1.09 crore visitors followed by Mahbubnagar with 90.76 lakh of them.
Foreign tourists
The State Capital, however, remained on the top in foreign tourists with arrival of 1.63 lakh out of the 1.66 lakh who visited the State during the year.
State Tourism secretary B. Venkatesham said the significant rise in the tourist inflow to these districts could be because of the pushkarams for Godavari and Krishna rivers in 2015 and 2016 respectively. The Godavari pushkarams in July 2015 and the Krishna pushkarams in August 2016 attracted significant number of tourists to the districts where the two major rivers of the State were flowing.
There were several major pilgrimage centres including Dharmapuri and Kaleshwaram in the erstwhile Karimnagar which attracted host of tourists during the pushkaram time. Khammam where the Godavari flows too attracted significant chunk of pilgrims during the period, he told The Hindu.