Spurred by PHD’s latest initiative to help grow Caravan Tourism in North and Central India, T3 catches up with Raghwendra Kumar Singh, Managing Director, MP Tourism, to share information on MP’s caravan offering and potential.
Caravan tourism generated a revenue of Rs. 9,44,588 in the financial year 2011-2012. This grew to Rs. 1040521 in the financial year 2012-2013. In the current year, we are expecting more than 20 per cent growth in revenue.
Currently we have a caravan in Bhopal, Indore and Gwalior, and in near future we are going to increase the number of vehicles. We are sending information to Indian and foreign tourists via email and SMS and are also placing ads in magazines and newspapers to increase visibility of this product.
MP Tourism currently owns three caravans. In addition, parking facilities or caravan bays have been constructed to park caravans. The facilities include vehicle wash points, sewage disposals, power supply back-up, wash rooms for guests, rest-rooms for drivers, laundry services, tourist facilitation centres, water supply and communication facilities, among others.
Caravan tourism, a new concept in India, is a unique tourism product that has been launched in Madhya Pradesh enabling tourist to visit and stay amidst nature in caravans and explore sites which are otherwise off limit in these regions. There is a lot of potential left to be explored for caravan tourism in Madhya Pradesh. We are working on expanding the reach of these facilities to a number of tourist places in the state.
