Kerala: Responsible tourism to create one lakh jobs

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Tourism minister Kadakampally Surendran said that over one lakh direct jobs would be created through the Responsible Tourism Mission in the state. "At least 50,000 locals would be given training under the mission," the minister said while inaugurating the Responsible Tourism awareness workshop here on Monday. This is the third awareness programme organised in the state after the RT Mission was announced.

 “As part of the RT Mission, the Tourism Department plans to start 20 Village Life Experience (VLE) packages in the state,” the minister said. “Tourism packages based on traditional activities like coir, handicrafts, clay pot manufacture and toddy tapping will be promoted,” the minister said. For a decade Responsible Tourism was conducted as one of the projects of the Tourism Departments.

In fact, it was considered a project of Kerala Institute of Travel and Tourism Studies (KITTS). The Mission will come directly under the Tourism Department. “RT will get more respectability and authority,” a top tourism official said. At the moment, the RT initiatives cover only a few destinations in the state (Kumarakom, Thekkady, Kovalam, Vythiri, Kumbalangi, Ambalavayal and Bekal). The Mission mode will now extend the activities to all destinations.

Earlier, it was limited to destinations, except in Wayanad. Now, instead of destination-based RT cells, the movement will be broad-based by forming district-level RT cells. The Tourism Department has estimated the cost of the new Mission to be '2.19 crore, and the government had already granted sanction for the release of fund for this fiscal.

Nonetheless, it is less than half the amount that was earmarked in 2015 for the Responsible Tourism initiative ‘God’s Own Country, People’s Own Tourism’ (POT). The ‘POT’ project, which was to be implemented in 114 panchayats in the first phase, was allocated Rs 5 crore. The RT Mission is also expected to take up the RT classification which has been left incomplete. Once the classification is complete, only RT-compliant hotels could avail of government subsidies.