 "Akhilesh Yadav, Samajwadi Party")
Uttar Pradesh has drawn a blueprint to promote health tourism by leveraging the traditional health and wellness heritage of the state.
The government would prepare a database of all traditional and ancient systems of medicine, apart from yoga and ayurveda procedures having roots in the state to boost health tourism.
Besides, such centres would be facilitated with loans by the state government under the new UP Tourism Policy 2016. The new policy is not only comprehensive, but multi-pronged in its approach to cover the various aspects of tourism, such as sports, heritage, health, rural, handicraft, religious, culture, music, food etc.
The new policy would be effective for the next five years.
UP principal secretary tourism Navneet Sehgal said here today the state had decided to exempt amusement and theme parks from entertainment and luxury tax for five years as a sop.
Apart from health tourism, UP is targeting to promote sports tourism under the new policy, which equally stresses upon ecological and local community friendly initiatives, he noted.
Sehgal said the government would ramp up the strength of tourism police so as to man all the important tourist spots and circuits all over the state.
The government is even mulling promulgating a special Act for the safety of tourists and protecting them from exploitation and harassment,
The tourism department would organise road-shows both in India and abroad to cultivate a positive image about UP and felicitate personalities and organisations rendering yeoman's service in promoting tourism.
Meanwhile, the policy seeks to overcome shortage of quality hotel rooms for tourists. The places, which are facing such shortage, the government would identify government properties to utilise them for accommodating tourists.
There has been a significant rise in tourist inflow to UP from 727,000 backpackers in 1998 to almost 3 million in 2014.
