The tourism sector in Kerala needs innovators rather than emulators to woo tourists to the State, V. Venu, former Kerala Tourism Principal Secretary and CEO of Rebuild Kerala’s advisory committee, has said.
He was speaking at a face-to-face organised by Tourism Professionals’ Club on his book An Introduction to the Business of Tourism here on Thursday. Time has come to go beyond the level of Kerala being referred to as God’s Own Country, from the marketing point of view, he said. Mr. Venu called upon the tourism fraternity to work with the government in promoting renovated heritage sites in historic locales like Muziris, since most tour operators had not included them in their itinerary.
Mr. Venu exhorted stakeholders to retain Kerala’s uniqueness of celebrating small tourism ventures which benefit the local community as well. On the flip side, he said stakeholders should be ashamed of how stopovers at several locales en route to Munnar and Thekkady, which are nothing but crass commercial ventures, are passed off as “tourists having a Kerala experience”.
On his book, he said it was an old-fashioned but authentic and genuine textbook to provide youth and students an insight into the tourism industry. Most books taught in tourism courses in Indian universities are outdated, he observed.
Tourism is never a stable sector since one has to live from season to season. Inbound tourism is in crisis, even in Europe, where operators have wafer-thin margins. Countries like Spain have ghost airports and tourism towns due to the steep fall in the number of tourists, he said.