North flavour at tourism meet Peace back in hills, delegates told

Ministers Rabindranath Ghosh and Gautam Deb (centre) and others at the programme at Gajoldoba on Sunday. Picture by Passang Yolmo 

BIRESWAR BANERJEE, TT,  Jan 21, 2018, Siliguri: A tourism conclave organised by the Bengal government and trade body CII on Sunday sent the message of peace and tranquillity in the hills and north Bengal.

At Destination East, which draws a number of foreign delegates and was held in Calcutta earlier, was organised near Siliguri for the first time only to showcase the tourism potentiality and attractions of the region.

Fifty-six international delegates, mostly tour operators or those involved in the hospitality industry, from 36 countries participated in the event at Gazoldoba, located 30km from here on the banks of the Teesta.

"We have already invested over Rs 300 crore in infrastructure at the mega tourism hub at Gazoldoba. The area is well connected by air and road and there are many more attractions like golf course, budget hotel, spa, boating, rafting, food craft institute...We wanted to highlight it before the foreign delegates," Gautam Deb, the state tourism minister, said at the event.

The foreign delegates vowed to promote the region, especially the hills, once they returned to their countries.

"Our interest is mainly the natural beauty of this part of West Bengal and keen to work on the unexplored areas of Himalayan region. Though this is my first visit in the region, but so far my experience is concern, I have found there is good potentiality in the field of tourism. As apart from location, Darjeeling Tea is one of major attractions that can attract many tourists," Paul James, a tour operator from London, said.

Noelia Espinosa, a veteran tour operator from Madrid in Spain, is in the business for the past 10 years and mainly working with the tourists in Mexico, Columbia, Peru and African countries. She had visited Calcutta couple of times, but came to know about Darjeeling only when she had visited Bhutan last year.

"We came to this place (Gazoldoba) and heard that government is working for its development. We are equally interested to visit Darjeeling as I heard about the place when I was in Bhutan. After visiting to Calcutta, I found it is safer than Delhi. Now I think Calcutta-Darjeeling-Bhutan and Andaman can be a good tourism circuit that I will promote once I will return to my country," the tour operator from Madrid said.

Raj Basu, the panel head of tourism, CII, said: "We wanted to send a message to the world through the foreign delegates that there is no uncertainty in the hills and in the region now and tourists can visit here without any hesitation. Earlier the focus got diluted with Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha through this event. But this is the first time we have organised the event here only to focus on Darjeeling hills and Dooars to showcase its potentiality."