VIJAYAWADA: Tourism Minister Muttamsetti Srinivas Rao has said that the Tourism Department is bringing a dedicated mobile application (App) for the convenience of the public to provide information related to tourism destinations, hotels and special packages. The app will be launched by Dasara.
Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, the minister said that the tourism department had suffered huge losses due to the Covid pandemic. The department has netted a revenue of Rs 60 crore as against the usual income of about Rs 120 crore.
The minister said the government has proposed to establish five and seven-star hotels across 13 districts to boost tourism and the hospitality sector through Public-Private Partnership. In this regard, Oberoi Group has come forward to invest in setting up five-star and seven-star hotels in Visakhapatnam and Tirupati.
Further, the minister said that proposals are still on for bringing seaplanes to boost the tourism attractions of the State and asserted that focus was laid on designing special tourism packages to attract local tourists. He later announced that World Tourism Day will be celebrated on the 27th of this month. Plans are devised to improve amenities at four tourism zones proposed in the state. Measures are being taken to make tourism a main revenue earner for the State in the coming days, he added.
New sports policy soon
Srinivas said that Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy was giving top priority to sports and a new sports policy would be brought out by the State government shortly for improvement of sports infrastructure, encouraging players in rural areas and training of sportspersons.
He said that the government has proposals to build sports centres in PPP mode in 15 locations in all 13 districts of the State as part of the development of sports infrastructure. “In the last two years, we have spent Rs 6 crore for incentivising the sports persons performing at the national and international level, so as to encourage them,” he said and added that hockey player Rajani was given a cash reward of Rs 85 lakh and a job was given to her brother. APTDC chairman Varaparasad Reddy, SAAP chairman Byreddy Siddhartha Reddy and others also spoke.