Visakhapatnam: Andhra Pradesh has received about 2.6 lakh foreign tourists and over 12.5 crore domestic tourists in 2016. But, of the total foreign tourists having visited Indian in the past few years, less than four per cent have come to And-hra Pradesh. Though safety and security of foreigners is not an issue in AP, lack of promotion of destinations in AP besides lack of proper infrastructure are the main reasons for the less inflow of foreign tourists to Andhra Pradesh.
Nearly 80 lakh foreign tourists visited India in the last year and only 2.6 lakh (less than four per cent) foreigners had come to parts of Andhra Pradesh. Contradicting the claims of tourism officials and politicos that Vizag was the top tourist destination in the state, two districts — Chittoor and Anantapur in Rayalaseema of the state have been attracting more number of foreign as well as domestic tourists. A majority of the foreign tourists were from the South–East Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Middle East countries such as Dubai among others. The inflow of tourists from the USA, Russia and Germany and a few other countries was seen in few places in the state only.
Andhra Pradesh has everything a tourist likes to visit, starting from beaches and hills, monuments, wildlife, tribal tourism, river tourism, festivals, temples and culture. “Compared to previous years, AP has been attracting more foreign tourists with high growth rate and we are expecting a change in trend in flow of foreign tourists in the coming years as we have been creating facilities at the tourist places and also started promoting the state in various road shows and tourism events across India and also abroad,” said AP tourism department secretary N. Srikanth.
“Nine major tourism themes have been identified for development in the state to attract foreign tourists and we have divided five tourism zones (Vizag, Amara-vati, Anantapur, Nellore and Rajahmundry) for developing each zone with specific tourism theme. We are also planning to explore eco-tourism projects such as Operate Safari in Srisai-lam Tiger Reserve but we are waiting for the forest department’s permission,” Mr Srikanth said. However, the tour operators said officials have failed to devise a marketing strategy for tourism.
