Carry On Kerala

When former Beatles icon Paul McCartney, the Prince and Princess of Kent and desi royals like Priyanka and Rahul come calling, Kerala tourism can be considered arrived. The good times have been rolling all of this season for the Rs 6,500-crore local tourism industry. Final figures are yet to be compiled by the tourism ministry, but close to 3 lakh foreign tourists visited Kerala in 2003—up by a record 30 per cent from the previous year. Domestic tourism rose by 6 per cent: 59 lakh Indians chose Kerala as their destination. According to tourism director Alkesh Kumar Sharma, Kerala received about 70,000 more foreigners than what it did in 2002. The domestic tourist surplus was over 3.3 lakh. Foreigners shelled out Rs 700 crore and Indians Rs 4,900 crore.

Hotels are booked until mid-February. The tourist season is being stretched to March while the post-monsoon spell that usually begins in November stands advanced by a month. Brand Kerala is sold out on the upcountry and the global circuits. So when McCartney and wife wanted to get away from the hustle of London, they went by the National Geographic Traveller advice that Kerala is one of the 10 must-see destinations of the world and one of the 50 destinations of a lifetime. After a 16-day unpublicised holiday, McCartney wrote in the hotel register, "Truly, this is God's own country."

"The tourist traffic we have had during the last three months of 2003 pales into insignificance all previous arrivals," says a buoyant K.C. Chandrahassan, the Kerala chapter chairman of Travel Agents Association of India. If the English, Americans and the French constituted the bulk of travellers, the tourist profile too is shifting. The Dutch have chosen Kerala and have been coming in droves by chartered flights. There is one flight a week from Holland until season's end this year.

According to Chandrahassan, there has also been a qualitative shift from the budget to the high-spender tourist. More interestingly, Kerala's charms are making domestic tourists loosen their pursestrings. Says Jose Dominic, CEO of The Casino Group of Hotels (now rechristened CGH Earth) which owns Coconut Lagoon at Kumarakom and the Spice Village in Thekkady: "Kerala has become a destination for the individual tourist as well as families. Our domestic travellers are more liberal in spending unlike the foreigners who arrive on package tours." The boom, he says, is due to the strictly entrepreneur-driven tourism ministry. But the government still needs to untangle some of the regulatory provisions. "It's not uncommon to see foreigners sipping beer from tea cups for fear of the police at hotels that obviously have been denied a beer licence," he says.

Given the tourist response this season, several government policy initiatives are in place. There is a new thrust on eco-pilgrimage and health tourism. Three committees have been set up to target a revenue of $50 million by tapping the state's ethno resources. INTACH has been roped in for preserving historic properties like the temples, Portuguese-built churches and the Jewish synagogues.

The sea and the sands beckon.