Special App for Tourism to be launched by Dasara says Muttamsetti Srinivas Rao

Tadepalli: Tourism Minister Muttamsetti Srinivas Rao said that the Tourism Department is bringing out a dedicated mobile application (App) for the convenience of the public to provide information related to tourism destinations, hotels, and special packages. The app would be launched by Dasara.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, the Minister said that the Tourism Department had suffered a great loss of revenue during Covid crisis, where only revenue of Rs 60 crore was achieved against the usual income of about Rs 120 crore.

He said that the government had proposed to establish five and seven-star hotels across 13 districts to boost the tourism and hospitality sector through Public Private Partnership. In this regard, Oberoi Group has come forward to invest in setting up 5-Star and 7-Star hotels in Visakhapatnam and Tirupati.

Further, the Minister said that proposals are still on for bringing sea planes to boost the tourism attractions of the State and asserted that focus was laid on designing special tourism packages to attract local tourists. He later announced that the World Tourism Day will be celebrated on the 27th of this month. He also said plans are set to improve amenities at four tourism zones proposed in the State.

With regard to sports, Minister Srinivas said that Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy was according top priority to sports, where a new sports policy would be brought out by the State government soon for improvement of sports infrastructure, encouraging players in rural areas and training of sportspersons.

He said that the government has proposals to build sports centres in PPP mode in 15 locations in all 13 districts of the State as part of the development of sports infrastructure.