NO BACK PACKERS

The beauty of commodity theme based tourism is that it attracts quality tourists who pay a premium to get an out-of-the world experience. Most of the visitors convert the stay into an educative experience as well. In Spice Village, Thekkady, there is a full-time naturalist to explain the significance of ecology, bio-diversity, local community and cultivation practices of the region. “A large number of our guests want to see wild life and bird watching is one of their favourites.

But we are educating them about our plant diversity through tours to spice plantations and in the forests where we have a joint venture project to promote organic pepper cultivation in association with the forest department,” said Anand Gopinath, chief naturalist at Spice Village.

“At Tata Coffee’s Plantation Trail, the visitors are mostly the IT crowd with high disposable incomes or free independent travelers from abroad who fall into premium segment,” says MH Ashraf. Tata Coffee plans to convert more bungalows into money spinning ventures.

IN NATURE’S LAP

In most theme-based resorts, life is as natural as it can be —no television, no air-conditioning, no radios, no newspapers even. Eco-friendliness is the theme. Even the buildings are made from locally available material. In Spice Village, the house roof is made of elephant grass which is sourced from the nearby forests. This has also helped contribute to the income of tribal population here, Gopinath said.

Commodity tourism can be seen as a subset of agritourism which first got an entry into Oxford Dictionary in 2005. Agritourism describes the act of visiting a working farm or any agricultural, horticultural or agribusiness operation to enjoy, be educated or be involved in activities.

PROMISING POTENTIAL

India’s vast commodities sector offers potential for further theme-based tourism projects. Earlier, Rubber Board had mooted the idea of promoting rubber tourism in the plantations to provide supplementary income to growers and provide value addition to the sector.

Similarly, major cotton, jute, bamboo and sugar producing regions could be other candidates for theme-based tourism. In many countries, several agritourism themes have been developed and India has indeed imbibed and adopted some of them well.

“In developing the Coconut Lagoon or Spice Village we had to differentiate ourselves from the conventional, where quality of the experience is as important as the quality of the environment and also be a luxury property,” Jose Dominic said.

Post your comment  (1)

Connect:

Post to Twitter

Post to Facebook