Bengal tourism booming, 1.15 lakh more foreign arrivals

After storming to power in 2011, Mamata Banerjee had promised to turn Kolkata into London, Darjeeling into Switzerland and Digha into Goa. She may not have succeeded in accomplishing these Herculean feats. However, her aggressive promotion of Bengal as an ideal tourist destination has certainly borne fruit.

In 2015, Bengal witnessed an increase of 1.15 lakh foreign tourists compared to 2014. In a recently released report of the Central Tourism Department, Bengal received 14.9 lakh foreign tourists in 2015, up from 13.75 lakhs in 2014. In attracting foreign tourists, Bengal is ahead of Rajasthan, Kerala, Goa and Karnataka.

State tourism minister Goutam Deb said that tourism, like nearly all departments, was totally neglected during the three-decade-long Left Front rule. In support of his claim, Mr Deb cited the budget allocation for tourism in the year 2010-2011.

“In the last year of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government, the total allocation for tourism in the state was less than Rs 12 crore. During Mamata Banerjee’s rule, there had been a paradigm shift in the fund allocation for this department. In the last financial year the allocation for tourism was Rs 259 crore. In the new annual budget tabled last month by the new government, nearly Rs 300 crore has been allocated to promote tourism in the state,” he said.

Unlike some other political leaders, Ms Banerjee has travelled extensively across the state and is acquainted with virtually every block. She always regretted the fact that the geographical and topographical diversity of the state was not adequately exploited for promotion of tourism. “Bengal has high peaks of Himalaya in the north and a sea in the south; it has plains and plateaux; it also has jungles and rivers,” Ms Banerjee has frequently said.

Ms Banerjee appointed Shah Rukh Khan brand ambassador of Bengal in 2012 but for some reason, his first promotional video did not help the state as much as Amitabh Bachchan’s endorsement had helped Gujarat. Nevertheless, the state government again roped King Khan to shoot a series of promotional campaigns, titled “Experience Bengal — Sweetest Part of India”.

A senior tourism department official said that the new promotion will invite tourists not just for sightseeing, but to also have a taste of Bengali culture, heritage, arts, cinema, cuisine, handicraft, history and lifestyle. “These are now essential parts of modern global tourism,” he explained.

While traditional tourist spots like Santiniketan, Sundarbans, Doars Darjeeling, Murshidabad and Bankura had been given a boost, the Bengal government has also developed some offbeat places in the tourism map. “The traditional tourist spots have become congested. The foreigners come to visit Bengal and want to board and lodge with locals so that they can get a first-hand feel of the regional customs and culture and relish the local cuisine. So we have developed homestays at many places, particularly Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Doars and even in the Sunderbans region. These homestays have received a very good response from foreigners,” principal secretary tourism Ajit Ranjan Bardhan said.