'Five million tourists visited India in 2007'

PUDUCHERRY: Around five million foreign tourists had visited India in 2007 which was a big jump from the 3.92 million tourists during the previous year, Union Tourism and Culture Minister Ambika Soni said on Tuesday.
   
Around 400 million domestic tourists had also traveled across different parts of the country during 2007, she said.
   
She was speaking after declaring open the Rs 35 crore `Zest Big Beach-Puducherry` a project of the Mahindra Holidays and Resorts India Limited (MHRIL) at Manapet coastal village near here.
   
Puducherry will emerge in the near future as a major centre for cruise tourism and efforts to promote this project would be intensified in collaboration with the Union Shipping Ministry, she said.
  
`We should work together to make Puducherry as a major destination as was done in respect of Sikkim and Goa and other destinations. In the near future Puducherry would emerge as a centre for cruise tourism`, she said.
   
Around 74 heritage sites had been identified in Puducherry and `we should look at the best of them for promotion and restoration for the benefit of the people here`, she said.
   
The Auroville International Project and Sri Aurobindo Ashram here were adding to richness, the legacy and also full-fledged projection of Puducherry as a destination. `There had been lot of questions and eager enquiries about Auroville in different parts of the world from information seekers as they want to visit Auroville to have a new experiment in India`, she said.
   
On the need for investment in hotels for meeting the requirements of budget category of tourists, the Union Minister said there was also need to facilitate young and enterprising sections to invest in hotels and through the mode of public private partnership more pilot projects could be encouraged.
   
She asked the Tourism Minister of Puducherry Malladi Krishna Rao to visit Delhi for talks on the various tourism development projects particularly in executing the plan of the territorial government to set up a golf court on an extent of 110 acre site close to Manapet village.
   
Chief Minister N Rangasamy said the government would always play a proactive role in promoting tourism by private players.
    
Malladi Krishna Rao said the government planned to encourage private players to construct the hotels with the subsidy available from the Centre. There was a possibility of 30 hotels coming up here. He sought a one time grant of Rs eight crore from the Centre for promoting tourism and also Rs 50 crore for establishing a golf court here.