January: The Gujarat government earlier on Tuesday has announced its new tourism policy for the years 2020-25. The key points of the policy has focus on attracting new investments in the ‘high priority tourism centres’ by offering profitable incentives to the business persons. Chief Minister of Gujarat Vijay Rupani quoted that the tourism projects (like hotels and resorts) those will come up in the high priority centres would be qualifying for subsidies on investment and other incentives.
Kutch, Devbhumi-Dwarka, Narmada, Gir-Somnath, Porbandar, Junagadh and Dang districts are listed among the high priority tourism centres. Some other specific talukas of other districts, included in the list of high priority tourism centres are Dhari in Amreli and Dabhoi in Vadodara.
The government will give 20 per cent subsidy on the capital investment in order to set-up a hotel in a designated high priority centre, under the policy. The government has paid attention to all aspects of tourism from caravan rental services, adventure tourism sectors, to attract foreign tourists, the state tourism department has facilitated all the required.
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Rupani said, “Instead of focusing on the entire state, our aim is to develop tourism infrastructure in these high priority areas. Under the new policy, incentives will be given where it was needed the most. Some of the new avenues which we are targeting are beach tourism, caravans and rural experience-based tourism.”