Tourism flourishes at Ooty this summer
Even after the end of the summer festival, tourists continued to throng the hills with weekends remaining heavily crowded in all tourist destinations.
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COIMBATORE: More tourists have visited Ooty, the Queen of Hills, during this summer season, as compared to the previous years.
“Since the start of April this year, 8.61 lakh tourists have visited the hills until May. This is over 1 lakh than last year, when Ooty recorded a tourist inflow of 7.34 lakh during April and May,” said D Balashankar, deputy director of horticulture, The Nilgiris.
Even after the end of the summer festival, tourists continued to throng the hills with weekends remaining heavily crowded in all tourist destinations. The summer festival (Kodai Vizha) commenced on May 6 with a vegetable show in Kotagiri. A line-up of events followed with a Spice Show, Rose Show, Fruit Show and 125th Flower Show until May 23.
This year, 3.33 lakh tourists arrived in April and 3.97 lakh in May as against the 2.21 lakh visitors in April and 4.10 lakh visitors in May last year. The five-day Flower Show alone attracted 1.30 lakh tourists to the Government Botanical Garden (GBG), while generating revenue of Rs 1.23 crore to the horticulture department as against last year’s 1.01 lakh visitors and revenue of Rs 98 lakh. Usually, visitors to GBG are taken as a rough estimate of tourists visiting the hills.
“Tourist arrivals were better than previous years due to additional events organised as part of ‘Ooty 200’ celebrations. Additional events like photography expo, heritage walks and film festival turned out to be major crowd pullers. Besides domestic tourists from TN, Kerala and Karnataka, there was also a significant presence of foreign tourists. The numbers haven’t reduced yet; it looks like the tourist season will continue till mid-June,” said D Uma Shankar, district tourism officer, The Nilgiris.
Cottage owners, hoteliers and those dependent on tourism are ecstatic with their business booming, especially after the pandemic. However, they look for better roads and infrastructure for the hill station to flourish.
“Roads are in poor condition between Ooty and Coonoor, and also in the town area resulting in traffic hurdles. Travelling by car between Ooty and Coonoor, which normally takes 30 minutes, now takes over an hour. However, traffic diversions in main town areas helped ease traffic a bit,” said AS Sadiq Ali, president of Ooty Cottage Owners Association.