Statistics Book 2007.pdf - Kerala Tourism

It is a well accepted fact that during the off-season, business is dull in tourism. The average monthly
income of houseboats irrespective of category is worked out as Rs 1.12 lakhs during season and Rs 43000
during off season.
Regarding local support, invariably, all houseboat owners opine on the affirmative. All of them are
depending local sources for purchasing daily consumables and the average expenditure per week on
consumables by a single houseboat is worked out as Rs 5518 for Alleppey and Rs 4702 for Kumarakom.
Regarding issues / problems faced by houseboats, availability of qualified staffs, unfair competition and
over-crowding are identified major areas in Kumarakom. In Alleppey, besides the above areas, presence
of intermediaries, delay in getting license and trade union activities are identified as major issues.
From policy perspective the following areas demand urgent attention
1. Ensuring registration to all houseboats
2. Enabling and promoting classification
3. Ensuring safety, particularly by renewing licenses for aged boats
4. Ensuring the use of LPG (commercial) only
5. Promotion of differential price mechanism based on service quality and facility offered
6. Training to houseboat employees on communication, product knowledge and first aid
7. Promoting customer relation practices
8. Diversifying the activities of houseboats
9. Linking houseboats with rural tour activities
10. Specific packages living home stay, Grihasthali, house boats and rural festivals
11. Determining the carrying capacity of backwaters.
The issues involved in this sector can be overcome by careful planning of backwater tourism in the state.
Measures may be taken to strengthen local involvement for minimizing leakages in tourism. By linking
rural living with backwater tourism, integrated tourism development programme can be practiced
successfully at backwater destinations.
11.2.3 GRIHASTHALI
Executive Summary
Grihasthali is relatively a new initiative of the Department of Tourism, Government of Kerala launched in
1998. The primary objective of this scheme is to preserve the traditional architecture of Kerala by
converting them into excellent accommodation option with modern facilities. Concurrently, the scheme
visualize public participation in promoting tourism by enabling the owners / interested entrepreneur to
bring age old building along with their heritage to the mainstream of tourism business. Besides arranging
financial assistance to prospective entrepreneurs the package for Grihasthali project includes investment
subsidy also. Detailed guidelines for submitting application, procedures for regulations etc are also
framed which in turn set the background for bringing heritage building into the ambit of tourism. In this
context, it may be noted that unlike other entrepreneurs who indulge in tourism by providing various
types of accommodation facilities, the promoters of Grihasthali projects are relatively new to the industry
and lack adequate business talent. However, this scheme has launched a new era in Kerala Tourism for
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