The city, whose economic mainstay is tourism, received only 19.5 per cent of the tourist flow in pandemic-affected 2020-21 compared to the previous year.
As against 36.28 lakh tourists who visited Mysuru during 2019-20, only 7.08 lakh came between April 2020 and March 31, 2021.
The country went into a lockdown from March 25, 2020 and the restrictions were lifted in a graded manner. Hence there were no tourists to the city and the palace during April and May last year. Only 2,012 tourists visited the palace in June and this number increased to 10,537 in August, about 45,800 in October and hit a peak of 1.83 lakh in January. In all, 708,753 tourists visited the city during the financial year 2020-21.
The statistics are from the daily ticket sales at the Mysuru palace and is presumed to be a yardstick of the tourist flow to the city as no traveller coming to Mysuru for the first time gives the palace a miss.
But even these figures are a partial reflection of the picture and does not depict the entire story. For, a majority of the visitors to the palace were locals or those drawn from areas near Mysuru. These trips were mostly undertaken to cater to their pent up demand for immediate travel to beat the frustration arising out of prolonged lockdown and restrictions on travel due to COVID-19. Being locals, it is assumed that a majority of them will not have patronised the local restaurants or stayed in hotels and hence did little to change the fortunes of the stakeholders.
Mysuru generally receives around 3.5 to 3.7 million tourists every year and this generates direct and indirect employment to benefit about 1 lakh to 1.5 lakh people. This includes about 180 hotels apart from resorts which provide direct employment to thousands of people ranging from housekeeping to cooks and waiters. This apart, the sector has spawned a mini industry of tour operators and taxi service providers.
The other beneficiaries include various vendors and artisans producing handcrafted works to produce souvenirs for tourists. But all of them were left in the lurch as tourism sector went into tailspin due to the pandemic. Hundreds of guides – both registered and unlicensed – who would usher the tourists and provide information – quit the only job they had pursued for decades with many ending up as street vendors or daily wagers in the construction sector.
This not only underlines the severity of the crisis that engulfed the tourism sector but had a cascading impact on the related service providers including those in the hospitality sector.
With the current second wave and the daily increase in the number of COVID-19 cases being reported all over the country, there are concerns that tourism sector may get derailed again.
