National
India targets 10 million tourist inflow by 2010

Kolkata, Aug. 19 (PTI): India expects a tourist inflow of around 10 million in 2010 when it will host the Commonwealth Games, Union Tourism Minister, Ambika Soni, said here on Saturday.

"We want 10 million tourist inflow in 2010," Soni said while inaugurating the Travel and Tourism Fair here.

"We are looking at the hotel industry to come up to the challenge," she said, adding at least 1.5 lakh more rooms in all categories of hotels are required to cater to the increased tourist inflow.

The country's tourism sector was growing steadily with 3.92 million tourist inflow in 2005 and 4.43 million in 2006, the minister said and expressed confidence that the inflow would touch the five million mark in 2007.

With specialised types of tourism becoming a craze throughout the world, India is coming up with Dubai-type shopping tourism facilities at several places besides focusing on health tourism.

At least four such destinations would come up soon and another is likely in West Bengal if the infrastructure is ready by the end of 2007, Soni said.

Noida in Uttar Pradesh with world-class facilities, Shilpagram near Hyderabad, permanent art and crafts fair at Bhubaneswar and another at Aurangabad near Ajanta-Ellora in Maharashtra are the shopping tourism destinations coming up.

Inviting other states to join the initiative, the minister further said that the Centre would underwrite 25 per cent of the money spent in developing such projects, whether by the state or a private player.

National

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