Bhubaneswar: According to data until September, the Pandemic Covid-19 has caused a decrease in 92.2% on the arrival of international tourists to Odisha this year, while domestic tourist entry fell 44%.
Last year the country had witnessed a 70% overall decline in tourist steps.
“The state government has promoted Odisha as a safe tourist destination,” Tourism Minister Jyoti Prakash Panigrahi said in the assembly on Thursday.
After the Pandemic outbreak, a total of 10,206 foreign tourists visited Odisha in 2020, while in 2021, only 788 international tourists came to the country, the minister added.
“To attract more tourists to the state, the Odisha government has taken several steps such as travel exploration to Odisha’s interior by arranging Odisha campaigns through roads.
Members of different organizations have been given training on sanitication and hospitality in the middle of the ongoing pandemic,” Panigrahi said .
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He also mentioned that the state government had planned to hold the ECO retreat site in seven winter tourist attractions, from 2021-22, and will do it for the next five years.
In 2020-21, the government, in relation to FICCI, carried out tourist roadshows in four different places to promote and popularize tourist destinations.