Bhubaneswar: The Hotel and Restaurant Association of Odisha has urged the state government to establish Tourism Development Authority on the lines of Skill Development Authority already set up in the state.
A memorandum to this effect was submitted by the association to chief minister Naveen Patnaik.
"The State Tourism Development Authority will aim at boosting the image, branding, publicity and employment generation in the tourism sector of the state," said chairman of Hotel and Restaurant Association of Odisha, J.K. Mohanty. The association, which represents the hospitality industry of the state, proposed that the authority will be headed by a senior bureaucrat nominated for a fixed tenure of five years.
The continuity in tourism promotion activities gets affected due to frequent changes at the level of director and secretary of the state tourism department, the memorandum said.
"The proposed authority can be an extended arm of the state tourism department with a continuous term of five years. It can be given targets in terms of tourist footfalls, boosting image of the state through national and international publicity campaign, branding of the state at different levels and attracting investments to boost the infrastructure in the tourism sector which will give rise to employment generation in Odisha," said Mohanty, who is also a member of the State Tourism Advisory Council.
The association said tourism sector in the state has more potential than the mineral resources lying under the soil. An official in the state tourism department said that Odisha had a 480-km coast line with beautiful beaches, Chilika brackish water lagoon, rivers, lush green forests, beautiful mountains and rich bio-diversity.
Quoting the World Travel and Tourism Council report, the association said that India's travel and tourism sector had ranked 7th in the world in terms its contribution to the country's gross domestic product.
The industry had contributed 9.3 per cent of the total employment (both direct and indirect) in 2016.
