Gujarat expects over 3 crore tourists this year

Kolkata, April 5 (IANS) Gujarat is expecting a tourist footfall of over three crore this year even as the state continues to promote its tourism sector aggressively, asking people across India to visit its locales during the holiday season.

"The gross flow of tourists last year was 2.87 crore. This year we expect a growth of 15 percent," Gujarat Tourism marketing manager Kingshuk Biswas said at a promotional event here.

He said tour concepts like Gir, Saurashtra tour, archaeological monuments and several others were contributing to the growth in tourism and it is now actively inviting the film industry across India to shoot in the state.

"Films are an effective medium to promote destinations and we are keen to attract the film fraternity to come and shoot here. We will clear all filming permits within seven days of application," he said.

Gujarat has set-up a film assistance centre over a year back to promote filming movies and soap operas in the state.

Biswas said the state is also not charging any amount for filming permits and the required police protection in public places and a hotel is offering concessional rates for the film crew.

Asked about revenue expectations from the season this year, he said: "Tourism at present contributes 4-5 percent of the state’s GDP." However, he did not give any revenue projections for this year.

As per the data from Planning Commission, Gujarat’s nominal GDP for 2014-15 stood at Rs.867,643 crore, up by 12.1 percent over that in 2013-14.