Ooty: A record 30.90 lakh tourists visited the popular Government Botanical Garden (GBG) during 2017. This is due to the tourist flow into this Queen of Hills itself.
Voices grow for more infrastructure facilities to manage the increased flow of tourists. For the first time in the history of the 160-year-old GBG tourist influx crossed the 3 million mark in a year, Sivasubramaniam Samraj, joint director of horticulture(in-charge) said adding that 30.90 lakh tourists visited GBG in 2017, up by 2.07 lakh in 2016.
This showed that GBG is ever growing as a most preferred tourist spot in the hills, Mr Samraj added.
While this statistics has come as big cheer for the tourism and travel industry, N. Chandrasekar, secretary, Nilgiris Hotels and Restaurants Association, said that what still needs to be done is to enhance infrastructure facilities to have good roads, footpaths, public toilet facilities across the hills in par with international standards.
Government should allot more funds for tourism infrastructure development in the hills, he advocated.
Rohit Jain, joint secretary of the Nilgiris Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said tourism is a big industry in the hills. “To manage the parking and water needs due to increased flow of tourists to the hills, the administration should consider bringing Emerald water scheme to the town and to create a multi-story parking lot at NCMS ground in the town. The old proposal of creating parking facility over the Kodapamund channel should be given a new thought,” N. Chandrasekar suggested.
