Tag Archives: Jenu Devan

The Gujarat government’s Seema Darshan project is being constructed as a major spot at Nada Bet in Banaskantha district. Jenu Devan, Managing Director, Tourism Corporation of Gujarat, said that the Seema Darshan project which was inaugurated in December 2016 at Nada Bet has already started receiving around 4,000-5,000 visitors during the weekends. “The tourism department is now trying to promote Nada Bet on the lines of the Wagah Border with not only a Retreat Ceremony, but also creating a two-three hours tour package for that entire area which will include a tourist facilitation centre, auditorium, museum, interpretation centres, and other amenities. Electric vehicles will be introduced that will take the tourists around the 25 km border area up to zero point where they will be allowed to take photographs,” he said.

The Gujarat government is working to take out a heritage tourism policy, while focusing on attracting foreign tourists, said Jenu Devan, Managing Director & Commissioner of Tourism, Gujarat Tourism. He also said that the state has registered 14 per cent growth in the number of tourists in 2018-19. “In 2016-17, tourists’ inflow was 4.48 crore and the same went up to almost 5.8 crore in 2018-19. The annual growth rate was 14 per cent. With the trend of increasing tourists’ footfalls, we are expecting that tourist inflow should cross six crore in the current fiscal. About six lakh foreign tourists visit the state last year. The state is preparing a heritage tourism policy and approval for this will come shortly. At present, there are 33 heritage properties. With the implementation of the policy, more of such properties will come within tourism map” said Devan. He also said that two prominent tourist sites – Somnath and Dholavira – would be developed into iconic tourism destinations as a part of the Central government’s Swadesh Darshan Scheme.

Gujarat has received an overwhelming response in terms of investment in tourism projects after it launched its Tourism Policy 2015-2020 in September 2015, according to Jenu Devan, Managing Director, and Commissioner of Tourism, Tourism Corporation of Gujarat Limited. He says, “It has become a tremendous success. Till date, there are 220 applications for various tourism projects like hotels, resorts, amusement parks, etc. worth Rs 9,000 crore. So in the next few years, Gujarat is poised to have a fantastic tourism infrastructure for both the inbound and domestic tourists.” Gujarat received a total of 448 lakhs tourists during 2016-17. This was 16.9 per cent higher than the flow in 2015-16. The flow of tourists within Gujarat also increased with a 15 per cent growth. Speaking about the source markets in India and abroad, he adds, “We see the entire India as our source market. However, we get maximum traffic from our neighboring states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Internationally, UK tops the list followed by USA. We would like to receive more traffic from the South East Asian markets as they are short-haul destinations for India.”