Tag Archives: China-India Tourism Year 2016

Mega luxury cruise vessel ‘M.V.Ovation of the Seas’ called at the Cochin Port for a 2-day stop-over in its circuit of Dubai-Muscat-Kochi-Penang-Singapore. The vessel with 4000 passengers and 1649 crew was given a warm and colourful reception at the Cochin Port. ‘M.V.Ovation of the Seas’ is a brand new ship of the Royal Caribbean Lines which was floated out in April this year. It is 348 m long and is in the 2nd largest class of cruise vessel. 90 passengers from Dubai/ Muscat disembarked at Cochin Port and 80 passengers will embark from the Port. A brief plaque exchange ceremony was held to commemorate the inaugural call. G.Senthilvel, Chairman, Cochin Port, Dr. C. Unnikrishnan Nair, Traffic Manager, Cochin Port, Sethuraman, IPS, FRRO (Bureau of Immigration), M.M.Haseeja, Ministry of Shipping, Mohamed Farouk, Asst. Director General, Ministry of Tourism, Govt. of India, Thomas Korah, Joint Director, Kerala Tourism Department and other officials participated. Senior officials from Kerala Tourism and India Tourism were present to help the tourists for the local visits. Officials from the Ministry of Shipping and Ministry of Tourism, Government of India had specially come from New Delhi to welcome the cruise vessel as part of the Government of India’s measures to promote Cruise Tourism.

Li Yaying, Deputy Director General, Marketing and International Cooperation Department, China National Tourism Administration (CNTA), said that 674,000 Indian tourists visited China during January to December, 2015 and the mutual tourist visits is expected to exceed 1 million in 2016. Yaying said, “In 2015, a total of 120 million outbound trips were made by Chinese tourists, and the figure for India was also above 17 million. India has become a major emerging source of tourists to China.” After the success of ‘India Tourism Year’ in China which was celebrated last year, the opening ceremony of ‘China-India Tourism Year 2016’ will be held on January 14 at Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi. CNTA has also designed nearly a 100 tourism promotions and exchange activities for the year. These include promotional films, ads, Fam visits to China and tourism promotional activities themed with the Silk Route. A dedicated page for the ‘China-India Tourism Year 2016’ will be launched in English on the overseas promotion website of Chinese Tourism to give better access to information.