Bring the tourists back in Chennai – Times of India

CHENNAI: More than a decade ago, tourists who landed in Chennai never had to haggle with the auto drivers. They travelled to their small bed & breakfast accommodation on tourist-friendly autos which operated with a rate card. Sightseeing on ECR was a breeze as they could hop on to and hop off the bright yellow mini buses that came with a guide dressed in trim uniforms.
The three key initiatives pioneered by the DMK government during their previous tenure — touristfriendly autos, hop-on-hop-off tours on ECR till Mamallapuram and bed & breakfast scheme — fell prey to the political rivalry when AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa took over in 2011. The new government let these touristfriendly initiatives disappear and instead announced grand schemes like a ‘Sentosa’ in Chennai, which never saw the light of day.

The city had around 210 tourist-friendly autos. The project was expanded to Madurai, Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari and Trichy. Similarly, affordable accommodation with chances to see how the lo- cals lived led to the bed & breakfast scheme which was picking up. The hopon-hop-off tours offered tourists the freedom to sightsee at their own pace unlike on group tours. But the government turned it into a one-day fixed tour after 2011 and later discontinued it.
In addition, many innovations including promoting less known tourist destinations, eco-tourism and dark tourism were also discontinued. All these initiatives and aggressive marketing helped the government overcome the recession and achieve a 24.4% increase in tourist arrival in 2009.
With DMK leader M K Stalin taking over as chief minister and Irai Anbu, who was behind most of the innovative tourism initiatives, taking over as chief secretary, there is hope that tourism promotion will get a new lease of life in the state.
N Ravi, a retired Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation (TTDC) official, said the initiatives should be revived and more should be done as tourism is idling. “So much of planning and coordination between departments went into all of these initiatives. They were popular and were helping the tourists.”
J Sethuraman of Travel XS said, “The new government should set up a taskforce to strengthen, revive tourism and tourism infrastructure. It has to be brought back to the pre-Covid-19 level. Tour operators, hotels, guides all have taken a beating after being neglected for a long time. Domestic tourism should be promoted because foreign travellers will take time to return as our image has taken a beating due to the pandemic. The state should strive to get a ‘travel safe’ tag to have an edge over competing states. Promoting sustainable tourism will also be a crowd puller for foreign tourists.”