An illuminated Floatel on the Hooghly

Kayaking, speed-boating and other river-water sports are finally coming to town this winter.

Calcutta Yacht Club, to be floated by the year-end, will be “eastern India’s first yacht nature club” with an eye on boosting tourist traffic to this part for the world.

Stepping into its third year, the Floatel, “India’s first and only four-star floating hotel”, is readying this New Year’s gift for the city to kick-start water sports and a more intimate dialogue with the river. An ornate tourist bajra and air-conditioned tourist launches will also ply on the river.

One-time individual membership fee for the Calcutta Yacht Club will be Rs 125,000 per couple, while the Floatel’s guests can enjoy the club’s facilities for a usage fee.

“It has been scientifically established that flowing water heals mind and body, and based on that concept, the Blue Jeans movement is now a rage in the UK. It inspires citizens to spend as much time as possible and engage in activities near or on flowing water. Our yacht club is designed to maximise this contact, with even the jacuzzi and yoga classes to be held on the river,” said Manab Pal, the managing director of Manor Floatel Limited, which owns the floating hotel on Chandpal ghat.

At a time when many new hotel projects in the city are floundering, a fledgling address is leveraging the river as a hospitality hub to draw global tourists. With an eye on the Nile, maybe, which helps rake in over $200 million every day from riverine tourism.

The Floatel, the basic hull of which was built in Singapore based on the design solution by Consafe Engineering of Gothenburg, already boasts a 40-45 per cent foreigner occupancy in its 49 rooms. Pal, who specialised in naval architecture and admiralty law from the London School of Economics, expects the yacht club to have a multiplier effect on foreign tourist inflow to the city.

No wonder the government and the private tourism sectors seem buoyant. “Floatel is a unique hospitality format appreciated by foreign tourists and the proposed yacht club is perfectly in sync with our renewed thrust on using the river as a tourism tool,” said T.V.N. Rao, the managing director of the West Bengal Tourism Development Corporation.

“We are perpetually short of interesting features to shore up the itinerary for inbound tourists. With this initiative, the river can be packaged as a major attraction to energise tourism in the east,” said Anil Punjabi, the chairman (east), of the Travel Agents’ Federation of India.