Shimla, Feb 18
Events & activities all around the year
In a bid give a boost to increase the stay of a visitor in Shimla, the tourism industry stakeholders of the city have decided explore the potential of event based activities. ” The weekend tourism coupled with tourist friendly events will play a vital role in the occupancy of hotels and revival of other stake holders,” they stated in media communique.
Mohinder Seth, President of the association informed that the weekend tourists mostly come from nearby states of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Chandigarh UP, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir. These visitors need experiential tourism so that they can stay longer. Adding, ” Therefore, there is a need to create activity based attractions for the week enders.”
” Event based tourism will not only increase the stay of tourists which has decreased to one night stay, but will also bring meaningful opportunities to all those who are involved in the adventure and tourism sector in and around Shimla, they added.
He informed that the tourism industry Stake holders association has decided to design activities, to make ‘event based tourism’ an all round attraction for visitors.
He informed that as pilot project are planning to host ‘Shimla paragliding festival. He said that the paragliding company at Junga has offered to organise the same. The Youth and sports department will also be involved for successful organising of event.
Besides adventure sports he added that the other activities being planned will offer a variety of local food, folk music, cultural events, local handicrafts and more. All these activities shall be done by involving locals and stakeholders.
Adding he stated that it will be highly imperative to seek the support of the tourism department in this matter. The involvement of the department will make it easy to make the events a grand success, he hoped.
“Even trying to explore new tourists sight-seeing tours, which is a need of the time,” he noted. This type of events will be step ahead to save dying tourism of Shimla, concluded Seth.
Noteworthy, that Shimla was hosting around 33.18 lac visitors in 2017. In 2018 this number came down to 28.72 lac visitors. Followed by a slightly improved 2019, with 30.30 lac visitors. However lockdown period 2020-21 saw the drastic fall like everywhere. In first year it was 5.99 lac (fall of 81%) and in 2021, around 9.51 lac (fall of 73%).
Though the data of number of visitors of previous years displays a steady incline since 2008 but a deeper look into it displays that since 2011 till 2021 (The data we could evaluate), this graph of visitors has been ranging between 28 lac to 35lac visitors. Neither has it gone up from here, not has it stepped down.
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