Is there more to Udupi than religious and beach tourism? What about carrying sweet memories of the Temple Town in a box?
With this idea - Placexplore Lab – a tourism incubator aimed at community-based tourism and experiential travel has been launched. The programme is being hosted by the Urban Vision, Red Dot Foundation Global, Udupi Tourism and Mangaluru City Corporation with support from Vital Voices Fortune Mentoring Program of the United States Department of state.
The experimental 'Udupi in a box' — a memento — consists of the products made from GI tagged items from the Udupi district or for that matter wellness shots and juices featuring local flowers like blue pea (Shanka Pushpa), hibiscus and Jasmine.
The box will also give a fillip to local jasmine cultivators, who often reel under arbitrary pricing and limited local market.
"Tourists who visit here don’t carry any memories in terms of a memento like they do when they travel to foreign locales. That’s why this Community Based Experiential Tourism Start-up Incubator was launched,’’ says P Valsaraj, Associate Professor, Coordinator - Department of Food & Beverage Service, Welcomgroup Graduate School of Hotel Administration.
The launch and design hackathon was organised on October 31 and featured micro-entrepreneurs from the twin districts working on various initiatives.
There was a range of tourism microenterprise initiatives from surf schools, fishing tours, local artisans with coconut, pottery and bamboo weaving crafts, Yakshagana, eco-tours to farm tours.
Sixteen women from National Rural Livelihood Mission, who were trained for self-employment through the district Zilla Panchayat office, are also part of this start-up lab.
Prathima Manohar, Founder of Urban Vision and Elsa Marie D’Silva, President of Red Dot Foundation Global, sharing details of the incubator programme, said the cohort of entrepreneurs will receive mentorship and entrepreneurial training as well as a market access platform.
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