New plan to promote tourism

Tourism Corporation ropes in Crisil to prepare report on privatisation, plans to reduce cost

Encouraging privatisation of loss-making properties, bringing down costs and launching new programmes to market tourism potential of the state in the country and abroad will be the highlights of the new strategy chalked out by the Tourism Corporation of Gujarat Ltd, a state government enterprise, and the tourism department.

The corporation has asked rating agency Crisil to prepare a detailed strategy to make the enterprise a profit-making one over the next two to three years.

The corporation had reported a loss of around Rs 2.50 crore on a turnover of around Rs 6 crore in the last fiscal year.

"The government announced a new tourism policy in the last quarter of 2003. The government is now chalking out plans to make the corporation profitable and market the tourist potential of the state in India and abroad," Rajiv Gupta, managing director of the corporation, said.

"There is a huge untapped potential for tourism in Gujarat. We will now work with Crisil on privatising various loss-making units of the corporation. We are also looking at various ways of increasing revenue from tourism," Gupta said.

Gupta, who took charge of the corporation recently, has initially chalked out a three-point agenda to take the corporation to profit.

The plan includes privatisation of all the food and beverages units operated by the corporation.

"We run 10 such food and beverages units. They can be handed over to private parties on a profit-sharing basis. We have decided to hand over potential hotels run by the corporation under 'Toran' brand name to private parties. This will help the corporation reduce losses and earn revenue from the private companies that will run the hotels in a more professional manner," Gupta said.

The corporation also plans outright sale of loss-making properties it owns.

These are located in various tourism hot spots across the state.

However, selling off these properties may be a long process as it involves legal issues.

Aiming at attracting active private sector participation in the sector in state, the Tourism Policy: 2003-2010' envisages an action plan for tourism.

The plan will focus on development and promotion of tourist locations by district administrations.

The policy will also stress on attracting investments in the tourism sector by non-resident Gujaratis.

"The policy will ensure that all the tourism projects are structured to allow private participation. The policy should be implemented in an effective and time-bound manner so as to achieve targets.

"We should attract the maximum number of tourists to the state. To ensure this, the services of the Gujarat Industrial Promotion Board would be utilised. The commissioner of tourism will be the nodal officer for implementation of all the policy proposals," said Gupta.