Tag Archives: Homestays

The Uttar Pradesh tourism department has signed an agreement with rural homestay providers to offer better experience to the tourists visiting the spots located in rural areas. Visitors will get local experiences like farm stays, cuisine, and folklore. Govt is subsidizing these homestays and converting villages into rural tourism centers.

Manoj K Singh, Director, MPTB, said, “We are already developing few villages and converting them into proper homestays for tourists. Two of the non-negotiable components are ensuring safety of tourist and also maintaining hygiene, which is one of the pertaining challenge.”

Homestays in West Bengal is growing at a pace of 30 per cent compound annual growth rate, said Nandini Chakravorty, Principal Secretary, Tourism Department, West Bengal. She also revealed that the foreign tourist arrivals in the state have grown up by 2.57 per cent despite the slowdown in the global economy.  “The state government’s homestay policy encouraged the homestay sector and is growing at a CAGR of more than 30 per cent,” she claimed. Tourism minister Gautam Deb focused on the tourism and homestay policies and said that there are around 3000 homestays in north Bengal.

Odisha tourism department plans to start a special drive to encourage its citizens in Bhubaneswar to provide homestay facilities to the tourists from the first week of November. The tourism department will accord licence to house owners, who register themselves with the former. Under the scheme, the house owners can offer up to 5 rooms or 10 beds with good facilities. The house owner will be required to provide Indian breakfast to the guests and display the room tariff. Tourism officials will regularly visit the houses and take feedback of the tourists. “We will carry out awareness campaigns through advertisements so that people come to know about the homestay facility. From November first week, we will start direct registration of homes at our department. Earlier, people were applying to the Ministry of Tourism. Now the ministry has asked us to receive applications from people and conduct verification before permitting them to start homestay facility,” said Nitin Jawale, Director-Tourism, Government of Odisha. He further stressed that this move would help augment rooms for tourists in the city and other places. The state tourism department will also train the house owner, family members, caretakers and other staff on how to deal with tourists. Preferably those houses will be selected which is not crowded. Location of the houses, hygiene and safety aspects will also be considered during the inspection. Source: Times of India

Kerala Tourism has announced the dates of the second edition of International Homestay and Rural Tourism Meet which will be organised by the Kerala Homestay and Tourism Society (HATS). The three-day event will kick start on September 15 in Kochi at Bolghatty Palace. 1500 participants are expected to attend the travel meet as the main objective of the event is to enhance the business opportunities in the state for homestay providers, serviced villas and Grihastelly providing a platform to network with industry players. International Homestay and Rural Tourism Travel Meet is one of the largest B2B events for homestays and rural tourism in the country which will also be attended by national and international tour operators, entrepreneurs and destination management companies. “Homestays are inevitable part of Kerala Tourism and helps the industry to connect with the travel enthusiasts. The B2B meet is expected to discuss recommendations to boost the rural tourism sector.” said P. Bala Kiran, IAS, Director, Kerala Tourism. During the B2B meet, potentials and challenges of the sector will also be discussed via seminars and discussions. This travel meet will also address the changing tourism industry trends and evolving needs of the travel enthusiasts, primarily younger generation, who want to experience the village life and hence prefer to visit rural parts of the country.

After strategic tie ups with six state tourism departments across India, Stayzilla now gets on board with Andhra Pradesh Tourism for the joint promotion and development of homestays in the state. The MoU was signed in the presence of Ankit Rastogi, Vice President Marketplace, Stayzilla and Himanshu Shukla, IAS, Director Tourism of APT at Vijayawada. With this association, APTDC becomes the first Tourism Board to associate with a homestay aggregator in South India. Under this agreement, Stayzilla will lend its expertise to APT to conduct verification procedures and jointly boost homestays and unique stay experiences within Andhra Pradesh. This partnership will also enable verification and training of these new Homestays being developed right from the start. Stayzilla’s team in the South, headed by Stayzilla headquarters of Bangalore, will be part of the Service and Quality Assurance Committee under APT for Inspection, which includes property verification and screening. .

Homestays aggregator Stayzilla has revamped its mobile application to ensure that hosts and guests are connected 24/7 in locations with poor connectivity. The App has been designed to overcome data connectivity challenges in the farthest corners that often house the most beautiful homestays in the country. Most of these homestays are located in regions where there is no internet connectivity. When a guest books a stay in such remote areas, the booking often gets no response and is lost due to poor connectivity from the home owner or host’s end. Says Pankaj Gupta, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Stayzilla, “Stayzilla has hosts and homestays spanning the breadth and depth of India. This app release ensures that bookings can be realized end to end irrespective of the underlying data connectivity. We continue to work on exciting technical and product solutions to serve our mission of connecting travelers with hosts on Stayzilla.” Stayzilla’s offline feature will now connect the home owner with the guest by sending notifications on the app via SMS when the host is in data offline mode. The home owner simply needs to have a phone with cellular connectivity (even without 2G/ 3G) to receive the booking confirmation on his/ her mobile phone. Additionally, Stayzilla also ensures connectivity with the host through automated IVR, wherein he/ she is able to confirm bookings. The cognitive feature of the app predicts whether the host’s phone has internet connectivity or not and determines intuitively to reach out either via SMS or app notifications accordingly.