 "Tourists ride a camel, in Udaipur (Photo: PTI)")
The Rajasthan government is planning to announce a new policy to boost tourism in the state, which could include the regularisation of hotels in residential areas and tweaking the rules for granting bar licences to heritage restaurants, a government official said.
“The policy draft is almost ready, and we will soon seek suggestions, feedback, and opinions from travel trade on it and likely announce it by April,” he said.
The “Unit Tourism Policy” was introduced in 2006. Depending on the tourism sector demand, some changes are made in the policy every year and, accordingly, new policies are introduced. Whenever the government changes, major changes are reflected in the policy.
The official said this year's policy would likely include the regularisation of hotels running in residential areas, changes in the rules for granting bar licences to heritage restaurants, linking service apartments with the tourism sector, and changes in the master plan to allow opening of resorts in eco-sensitive zones. The state would take help from other departments to make the policy work.
Regularisation of hotels situated in residential areas has been a long-standing demand of the state’s hotel industry. According to industry estimates, there are about 8,000 hotels and guest houses in residential areas still waiting to be regularised.
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Rajasthan Hotel Federation president Hussain Khan said their main demand is for the regularisation of these hotels, which has been stalled for around 20 years.
Senior vice-president of the federation, Ranvijay Singh, said the lack of regularisation affects operations and prevents hotel owners from getting loans from banks.
Federation of Hospitality and Tourism President Kuldeep Singh Chandela said, “We hope the new policy will be finalised soon.”
He added this time many new points would be added to the policy.
“We hope that rural tourism policy, guest house policy, and heritage restaurants will be included. This time tour operators and travel agents should also be included in the policy. An outline should be prepared on the development of important sites, fairs, and festivals,” Singh explained.
Around 1,08,724,840 tourists visited Rajasthan in 2022. Of these, 1,08,328,156 were domestic and 396,684 were foreign tourists. In 2023, the number of tourists swelled to around 1,90,751,794. Of these, 1,79,051,925 were domestic and 1,699,869 came from abroad.
