– A meeting in this direction was held on Tuesday in Delhi between a Jharkhand tourism department delegation led by minister Sudivya Kumar, attended by departmental secretary Manoj Kumar and director Anjali Yadav and senior officials of Make My Trip led by vice-president Divya Khatri
Bihar Desk: Jharkhand government has initiated talks with online travel company Make My Trip for promoting tourist destinations and providing hassle-free facility to visitors in booking accommodation.
A meeting in this direction was held on Tuesday in Delhi between a Jharkhand tourism department delegation led by minister Sudivya Kumar, attended by departmental secretary Manoj Kumar and director Anjali Yadav and senior officials of Make My Trip led by vice-president Divya Khatri.
“The online travel company has expressed interest in promoting the tourist destinations of Jharkhand globally. They would be showcasing through digital marketing various tourist circuits developed by the state government and also travel arrangements, booking of hotels and other necessary arrangements required by a visitor. Its subsidiary unit GoIbibo will also help in promoting the tourist destinations. The preliminary round of discussions were very positive and they would be coming to Ranchi for further discussion and presentation of a formal proposal later this month,” said a senior tourism department official who was present at the meeting.
The state government has been promoting religious, mining, adventure, tribal and eco-tourism circuits.
It has recently inked an agreement with Central Coalfields Limited (CCL), a subsidiary of Coal India Limited (a PSU under coal ministry), for promoting mining tourism wherein visitors will be taken to see abandoned or reclaimed underground mines and explained about the mining excavations and other operations.
Tourism secretary Manoj Kumar confirmed the developments and said that the objective is to increase tourist footprints in Jharkhand while promoting favourite tourism destinations on search engines.
“They will be basically increasing Jharkhand tourism destinations’ presence digitally by popping them up on search engines so that people are made aware about tourism potentials in the state. They will be doing data analysis of visitor preferences and sending messages. A team from Make My Trip might visit Ranchi soon for another round of talks. They will also be giving us a proposal about their proposed budget,” said Manoj Kumar.
Sources said that efforts are on to merge accommodation facilities owned by the forest department (most of the waterfalls and reservoirs are in forest areas) and Jharkhand Tourism Development Corporation (JTDC) so that the private company can make arrangements for online booking of the accommodation facilities for the government through an online portal.
The travel company will also be holding talks with the government for making affordable and attractive tourist packages for various destinations and linking it with tourism circuits.
“The tourist packages will include booking of hotels, travel arrangements and other logistics for the visitors to their favourite destinations,” said a tourism official.
