Agra operators plan tourist weddings

With the tourist season in Agra nearing an end, travel companies of the town are planning new attractions for the tourists to keep them coming even after the tourist season ends.

Nirvana Tours, an Agra-based tour operator recently launched the concept of low cost wedding and honeymoon in the Taj City, for foreign tourists interested in the Indian culture and who wanted to get married according to Hindu customs and traditions.

Inaugurating the concept with the wedding of a UK based journalist couple recently, Sabita Jain, director, Nirvana Tours said the Taj Mahal was the supreme attraction for tourists coming to Agra. Most expressed their wish to get "remarried" in the shadow of the Taj Mahal to get the blessings of the eternal lover couple Shahjahan and Mumtaz Mahal.

Taking inspiration from this desire expressed by the tourists, Nirvana Tours launched the concept of arranging a low-cost Indian-style wedding for foreign couples in Agra, which would cost anything more than $ 300.

According to Jain, this package, which was not inclusive of the air-fare from their home country to Agra, presented the opportunity to have an Indian-style wedding arranged for them in a private villa close to the Taj Mahal, with all the features of a Hindu wedding like a "Pundit", "Mandap" etc. offered to the tourist couple according to the rate-package chosen by them.

She said if required by the couple intending to be married, the company could even arrange for elephants and a wedding procession for them, though such demands by the tourist were quite uncommon, who treated weddings mostly as private occasion.

According to Jain, the tourist traffic in Agra was slowly dwindling away with the end of the tourist season nearing, but by launching such innovative concepts, the company targeted individual tourists who had a higher spending potential, and intended to spend atleast a week of honeymoon in north India, treating Agra as their base to travel to the nearby towns of Jaipur, Varanasi & Khajuraho, all of which were popular destinations of foreign tourists coming to India.

Already, she said, the company had begun receiving a number of queries from UK and the rest of Europe and shortly. This concept should be brought on the company's website to ensure a yearlong business, she added.