As tourism picks up, aim is to reach 1L rooms target

Visakhapatnam: With the more and more tourists flocking to the Sunrise state, Andhra Pradesh Tourism Department (APTD) estimates that one lakh room accommodation is required by 2025 all over the state.

After the bifurcation of the state, the Andhra Pradesh government has decided to develop the state by making use of the high tourist potential of the state. With the vigorous plans and activities of the APTD, the state climbed to third place by March this year in the tourism, from the fifth place in 2014.

Andhra Pradesh has about 975-km long coastline with plenty of tourist attractions, with mythological, historical and forest backdrop. Aiming to reach number one place in the tourism sector, AP Tourism Department has taken up several initiatives across the state.

According to secretary, Andhra Pradesh Tourism Department, Mukhesh Kumar Meena, about nine crore tourists visited the state in 2014 and it has now reached 15.37 crore in the state. The state is also earning good revenue owing to the efforts to promote tourism for the past four years.

“Currently, about 10,000 rooms of all categories of hotels in the state are available. The APTD has decided to increase the accommodation to one lakh rooms by 2025.

Though there are a number of tourist attractions in the state, due to the lack of the infrastructure facilities and accommodation, the state government has been spending hundreds of crores of rupee for the past four years to develop the infrastructure and results are now visible,” he said.

In order to increase more number of tourists from both the country and abroad, the APTD had signed up with various companies to increase the accommodation facilities at every tourist spot. Not only accommodation, the APTD is also taking up several developmental initiatives to ensure every tourist spends at least two days at every tourist destination, Mukhesh Kumar Meena said.