Tripura: CM Biplab Deb unveils tourism department logo; state registers rise in tourist footfall

The logo of Tourism development corporation has images of Tripura’s state animal, monkey, historical tourist spot Unakoti, Mata Tripurasundari temple, state fruit pineapple and face of an indigenous woman. The logo has been designed by Debaditya Bhowmik, a final year computer science engineering student at National Institute of Technology (NIT), Agartala.

Talking about plans to develop the state, Deb said that his government has been working on projects to boost agriculture, industry, horticulture, animal husbandry, fisheries and tourism sectors. “Huge funds are drained outside Tripura in these sectors. Any state government should treat stopping leakage of its economy as primary responsibility”, he added.

As part of checking the outflow of funds, the state government is looking towards attracting more tourists from West Bengal, and other states. He added that the neighbouring country is a major advantage for tourism development in Tripura since a large number of tourists from Comilla, Brahmanbariya and Chandpur district of the country can find scope to visit hilly terrains of Tripura.

“We shall open our doors to tourists from across the world”, the CM told reporters. He also cautioned transport, tour operators and hoteliers to make sure that they are well behaved with tourists.

Tripura has seen a rise in tourist footfalls in last three years. An official of the TTDC informed that over 10 lakh tourists visited Tripura since 2016. “The graph of tourist footfalls in Tripura have steadily grown from 3,99,447 tourists registered in 2015-2016 to 4,19,807 tourists in 2016-17 and 4,83,488 tourists in 2017-18.”

Meanwhile, in terms of revenue from tourism, the corporation generated Rs 2.13 crore from different tourist spots in 2015-16, which went up to Rs 2.72 crore in the next year. It has so far risen up to Rs 3.23 crores in 2017-18.