Bhubaneswar, Jan. 20: Festivals organised by Odisha Tourism and in collaboration with other institutions, agencies and associations are creating a growing and dedicated tourist inflow.

The Konark festival during the first week of December every year and the series that follows in Bhubaneswar, has proved many frequent travellers from neighbouring states are now planning to tune up their travel plan according to the timeline of Odisha festivals, which start from March and continue till February, the next year.

A corporate employee and tourist from Calcutta, on condition of anonymity, said: “The ambience, backdrop and involvement of the people have evolved in a professional manner. The events are attracting many people from my city. I visited the Mukteswar festival early this week and found it to be a real crowd puller. I will definitely plan my trip next time as per the festival calendar of the Odisha Tourism.”

“Though I was sorry to find many seats vacant, I must congratulate the organisers that the seats are not ticketed in the shows in Bhubaneswar. In Calcutta, even ticketed shows get houseful audience. With more marketing, increased travellers from Bengal will come during the festival season,” he said.

City-based tour operator Debasish Mohapatra said: “The Konark festival and Chandrabhaga international sand art festival have become popular in the tourism sector and are attracting foreign tourists. Hotel and restaurant owners are registering more bookings in the season (first week of December). Earlier, only during the last part of the year (December 25 to January first week) the hotel rooms were occupied with guests. Now, our regular customers from foreign countries are also enquiring about the festivals.”

Tourism officials admitted the Samrachana (festival of choreography), Sankirtan festival (devotional music), Rangabati (folk dance), Konark festival (classical dance), Dhauli-Kalinga Mahotsav (martial art and dance), Toshali National Craft Mela (crafts and cultural collage), International Odissi dance festival (Odissi dance), Odissi music festival, Mukteswar festival (dance), Rajarani festival (music) and Konark music and dance festival are turning out to be crowd pullers in their own manner.

While the festivals in the city were organised in collaboration with other government and private institutions engaged in cultural research and studies, Rajarani temple invited the attention of the Australian government last year. Musicians from Australia took part the Oz festival and it helped in putting Rajarani in the international tourism arena.

Apart from putting the temple in the global tourism map, it also helped the state to get more attention. Many tribal dialects are related to the Austro-Asiatic linguistic groups. Linguists have already proved many languages spoken by the primitive tribal groups in Odisha are related to the language spoken by the Aborigines of Australia.

Assistant director (tourism) Sanjeev Kumar Patra said: “We are trying to involve more and more renowned artistes from all over the country and even abroad, to attract more tourist inflow to the festivals. As the state has developed this unique concept of festival tourism and added new features every year, we are getting inputs regarding its acceptability in the tourism sector and rise in occupancy in hotels.”

Kedar Mishra, writer and critic, said: “The entire cultural rainbow of the region is almost included in the series of festivals and there should be more additions in future to attract people from various cultural backgrounds. Odisha can show its true leadership role in the cultural map of the country through its innovations.”