Short-distance travel, brief stay are new tourism trends: MP

BHOPAL: Amidst the raging coronavirus, a new trend of tourism seems to have surfaced. Tourists are preferring short-distance travelling and brief stay out during the weekends. The pattern has emerged over the last few days when many tourist spots witnessed good turnout. There is also another aspect of tourism which has been noticed during the corona times. People are preferring open spaces and spots with abundance of nature and good quality air. So, the tourist spot at Gandhi Sagar dam witnessed almost 100% occupancy during the past two weekends. Udaygiri near Vidisha also had a good number of tourists. As buses, trains and air services are restricted to contain the corona virus spread, people are travelling at a distance of 200-300 km by their own vehicles with family and or a select group of friends like people from Raipur and Bilaspur are visiting Amarkantak. Managing director of MP Tourism Development Corporation, S Viswanathan, said, “For some more months, I don’t expect overseas tourists or even domestic tourists travelling from a long distance.” Places like Udaygiri, Amarkantak, Gandhi Sagar dam, Pachmarhi, Choral and Mandu are drawing scores of tourists while in places like Khajuraho or Orchha which have archaeological monuments, the number is less. The MP Tourism Board is also trying hard to promote tourism in the buffer zones of national parks. However, the response so far is lukewarm. One reason behind this may be the heavy monsoon in jungles. For the past few years, after the closure of national parks for the monsoon, the government had decided to open the buffer zones for tourism a few years back. But the idea could never pick up. “Even before the Covid era, people avoided going to jungles during monsoon because of the obvious reasons of waterlogging and scare of insects and snakes,” said a forest department official. The hotel industry in Khajuraho, a big international tourist spot, looks “reluctant” to start operations because of the corona scare. “There is almost zero footfall of tourists in Khajuraho . We will review the situation after September and hope things would be under control during the festival times from October onwards,” said an official.