Kerala - Kochi   

Kerala Tourism plans weekend packages

— Photo: Vipin Chandran

ON EXOTIC TURF: With the tourist season set to begin, visitors from foreign lands have begun arriving in Kerala. A scene from Mattancherry.

KOCHI: Taking into account the response to monsoons being promoted as Dream Season in the State, Kerala Tourism has come up with a novel scheme called Dream Weekends.

Under this, special short-break packages are being promoted during the weekends of August and September. On offer are trips aboard houseboats, a leisurely beach holiday or a romantic getaway to mist-clad hill stations. The Onam festive season would add charm to the tours. The newest scheme from the stable of Kerala Tourism is aimed at ending ‘product fatigue’ that may set in if too much emphasis is given to segments which have been promoted many times over, said a tourism official.

“The main target group is families from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, who can easily drive down to Kerala’s tourist spots and spend Saturday and Sunday in the State,” said Ambujakshan Pillai, Deputy Director (Marketing) of Kerala Tourism.

Already, places like Wayanad teem with IT professionals and others who drive down on weekends to unwind. Kerala has the potential to attract tourists who visit places across the border like Kanyakumari, Kuttralam and Mysore.

Tour companies have offered four types of packages ranging from ones costing Rs 5,000 to those above Rs 15,000. Apart from tourist locales in cities and towns, those in the suburbs too find their name in the list that is available at the Kerala Tourism website www.keralatourism.org. Places like Munnar and locales bordering Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the Malabar area are expected to benefit most from the Dream Weekends package.

Already, the off-season monsoon packages on offer are popular with North Indians and foreigners like Arabs who visit Kerala to escape from the heat back at home and to enjoy the rains and the green canopy that envelops the State when the rains begin.

The Additional Director of Kerala Tourism, K.N. Satheesh said that the normal rainfall (unlike the heavy showers last monsoon) and the precautions taken to prevent the spread of contagious diseases (which had affected tourist inflow last year) resulted in more tourists coming to the State during the monsoons which is the traditional off-season in Kerala.

There was also good response to road shows organised by Kerala Tourism in Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Bangalore, New Delhi, Vadodara, Chennai and Ahmedabad, to promote the oncoming tourist season in the State. The shows helped travel agents from Kerala and the host State to enter into agreements beneficial to tourism in both the States.

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