Guwahati, Feb. 17: The Assam Tourism Development Corporation (ATDC) has taken the golf route to promote tourism with a tourney featuring as many as 80 golfers near Jorhat.
The corporation is organising the Assam Tourism Invitational Golf Meet at the scenic Kaziranga Golf Resort on Friday.
"The daylong tournament will feature as many as 80 golfers with eight from abroad teeing off at the 18-hole course. The idea of the meet is to promote the hotspots in the state among domestic and foreign tourists through golf," ATDC managing director Manik Chandra Sarma told The Telegraph today.
The golf meet is also expected to give a boost to the Assam International Trade and Industrial Fair in Jorhat that gets under way on Thursday.
Over 10 countries are taking part in the fair organised by the department of industries and commerce, government of Assam, in association with the Federation of Industry & Commerce of North Eastern Region.
ATDC is one of the partners of the trade fair.
A technical session on tourism titled A Potential Game Changer for Assam will be held during the fair on February 23.
"The scheduling of the two events (golf and trade fair) has been done in a manner that more people come to the venue," Sarma said.
Centrally located and being close to oil fields and tea estates, Jorhat serves as the base for tourism to places such as Kaziranga National Park and the world's largest river island Majuli.
The ATDC has acquired 181 bighas of land at Chandrapur near Guwahati for setting up a golf course.
"We have acquired land and the project will be done on a public-private partnership (PPP) model. Consultants will be appointed within 15 days following which the terms of agreement, scope of work, among others, would be discussed," he said.
Since last year, the corporation has turned its focus to high-end tourism by looking at five-star facilities near the state's five national parks.
Since the past three months, it has also added caravans in its scheme of things.
"We have an agency called Red River which conducts the caravan tours to places like Kaziranga and Shillong. As of now, we have two such caravans in hand. We will certainly look at acquiring more vehicles once the demand for the service increases and run it under the PPP model," Sarma said.
