Category: Top Three Stories

One more eco-tourist spot to be adorned in Tamil Nadu as the works for developing the Villivakkam lake into an eco-tourist spot officially began on Wednesday. The project was inaugurated by S P Velumani, the Minister for Municipal Administration. The lake that has of total area of 36.50 acres will have its 24.64 acres developed into an eco-tourist spot. The eco-tourist spot will be developed by The Greater Chennai Corporation at a budget of 16 crore as in their plan to restore 32 water bodies under Smart City project. The residual 11.5 acres of lake will be utilized to setup ... Read more

Smruti Mandir situated at Reshimbagh in Nagpur has been given grade-C tourism status. Known for the memorial of RSS founder Dr KB Hedgewar, the 78-year-old Smruti Mandir will now be able to get funding from Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), central and state government on works in and around it. The status was given following recommendations of the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) and the district planning committee. BJP city vice-president Bhushan Dadwe obtained copy of the notification under RTI Act on May 5. Dadwe, in a press release, said that the oral statement of the state government before the Nagpur bench of Bombay High ... Read more

To boost the tourism sector, Himachal government is planning to encourage ‘Heli-Taxi’ services at major tourist destinations, a senior official said today. Presiding over a meeting of the officials of aviation companies including Pawan Hans Limited, Skyone Airways, Ind Jet and hospitality players, Additional Chief Secretary, Tourism and Civil Aviation, Manisha Nanda said at present the state has three functional airports at Gaggal, Shimla and Bhuntar. “Work was in progress to facilitate the tourists and common people at Rampur and Jhakri in Shimla, Baddi in district Solan, Pandoh in Mandi and Manali in Kullu under Uddan-II scheme,” she said. Manisha ... Read more

After launching a series of award-winning design and renovation projects last year, Belmond revealed the details of seven highly distinctive developments across its portfolio of hotels, trains and cruises in 2018. Beginning last month with the launch of three new Art-Deco Grand Suites onboard historic Venice-Simplon-Orient-Express, Belmond’s diverse range of designs honour timeless craftsmanship, celebrate heritage and tradition and look to the future working with innovative designers and local materials. Lined up for the year is Belmond Savute Elephant Lodge in Botswana; Belmond Casa de Sierra Nevada in Mexico, a historic renovation of Belmond Cadogan Hotel in London and a ... Read more

In its endeavor to further ease visa applications for Indians planning to visit Greece, Global Visa Center World (GVCW), the Greek visa service provider for India, said it will open its Visa Application Centres on Saturdays also. Applicants can now avail prime time visa services offered by GVCW to submit their applications at the 15 visa centres across India. There centres are in cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Goa. “These services will be available every Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm. Applicants can also collect their passports on Saturdays,” said a GVCW press release. GVCW ... Read more

An artificial intelligence module has been developed by IRCTC to find anomalies in standard operating procedure using CCTV footage. With this module base Kitchens will be monitored pan India. The Artificial Intelligence module realises the value of their videos and photos with vision computing. It can detect an unexpected change or an event that does not conform to the expected pattern using their machine learning algorithms. To begin with, 16 base kitchens of IRCTC have been installed with high definition cameras connected to huge monitors for AI vision detection. Live streaming of 16 base kitchens is played all the time. ... Read more

The four-day annual summer festival in Yercaud is slated to begin on May 12. Chief Minister, Edappadi K Palaniswami, will inaugurate the event. The horticulture department is taking all measures and have begun to decorate the flowers of various varieties for the flower show. The department has already procured eye catching colourful flowers from various parts of the state and also from Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. It is reported that around 22,000 rose flowers have been fetched from Uthagamandalam alone. A replica of St. George Fort, tractor, and arch towers would be the highlights of this year’s festival. Vegetables and fruits carving, ... Read more

Photo Courtesy: scroll The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has announced that it will start issuing receipts for the food items sold on trains. IRTC had issued a letter to all zonal heads on Monday instructing that a minimum 10 point-of-sale (POS) machines should be provided in each train in their respective zones. According to a Railway Board directive, it is mandatory for licensees to issue proper bills to passengers for the sale of food items. “However, it has been observed that despite the instructions issued to licensees and IRCTC zones, hand-held electronic bill printing devices are not ... Read more

Awarded Luxury Beach Villa – Pinilla, Costa Rica TripAdvisor has announced the winners of the second annual Travelers’ Choice awards for Rentals. 30 best holiday homes across the globe are awarded across three categories i.e. Luxury ($300+ USD per night), Mid-Range ($100-150 USD per night) and Affordable ($99 USD per night and below). A Cozy Designer Minerva Apartment located in downtown Rome was declared the winner in Affordable category with the rates starting as low as $66 per night. An oceanfront condo in Kauai, Hawaii tops the list in Mid-Range category. A Luxury category was topped by a Costa Rican beach ... Read more

Uttarakhand has received the Global Star award on tourism from the Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Suresh Prabhu. The Joint Director Uttarakhand Tourism, Poonam Chand received the award at a programme held at Hotel Le Meridien in Delhi. Expressing happiness on receiving the award, the Tourism and Culture Minister Satpal Maharaj attributed it to love of the people of the state for the environment. “The dream of sustainable tourism can be achieved only by environmental protection, efficient waste management and eco tourism,” he said. “The state has been felicitated for prompting tourism while conserving bio diversity and complex ecosystem of ... Read more

Major aviation consultancy, Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) has urged the Central government to make the process of Air India Privatization investor-friendly otherwise it might soon shut down. CAPA, through its Twitter account said that “CAPA estimates AI headed for 2-year losses of USD1.5-2.0 bn in FY19/FY20. Failure to divest could see AI close unless govt willing to spend taxpayer funds. Far less costly to make offer more attractive to investors”. According to CAPA, the three key themes emerging on Air Indian divestment are: 1) Critical that terms in EOI – particularly for labour & debt – are amended, as ... Read more

Ballarshah Station Balharshah and Chandrapur stations (Nagpur Division) of Central Railway have been awarded first prize for depicting the best art & refurbishing itself as the most beautiful station across Indian Railways. Ballarshah and Chandrapur railway stations were decorated with paintings and sculptures depicting the Tadoba forest, which was welcomed by the passengers who had a feel of the rich wildlife beauty of the Tadoba Forest in the station itself. Both the stations have been awarded Rs 10 lakhs as the prize money. In order to promote cleanliness with creativity, the Ministry of Railways had invited nominations across all Zonal ... Read more

The Minister of State for Culture(I/c) and Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Dr. Mahesh Sharma inaugurates the Exhibition ‘India and the World: A History in Nine Stories’ -an extensively collaborative effort of the British Museum, London; National Museum, New Delhi; and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), Mumbai with the active support of the Culture Ministry. The Exhibition will be inaugurated at 5.00 PM, at the National Museum auditorium, New Delhi. The exhibition chronologically encapsulates the evolution of Indian civilization since antiquity and its interconnectedness with the outside world through a raft of exquisite artefacts from ... Read more

Asian Development Bank (ADB) said it will give additional loan for Himachal Pradesh to develop tourism infrastructure in the state. An ADB team led by Country Director Kenichi Yokoyama called on state Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur to allocate the second trench of Rs 750 crore loan under the Infrastructure Development Investment Programme for Tourism. The team appreciated the efforts of the state Tourism Department in implementing the phase one under the programme, which will be over by 2020. Nineteen projects were sanctioned under phase one out of which 16 were completed and the remaining three would be completed by ... Read more

Goa Tourism is planning to conduct a roadshow in US to boost tourism. Tourism minister Manohar Azgaonkar and chairman Goa Tourism Development Corporation (GTDC) Nilesh Cabral will head the roadshow, which will start on May 20. Chief secretary Dharmendra Sharma and deputy director tourism will also be part of the delegation to US. US tourist arrivals in Goa remain at less than 2 per cent of the state’s total tourist footfall. The tourism department’s website shows that the footfalls from the country dropped to 1 per cent in 2016 after showing a slight growth in 2015 when it received 12,227 visitors. Meanwhile, ... Read more