With a unique focus on attracting new investments in the state’s high priority tourism centres by offering lucrative incentives, Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani has announced Gujarat’s new Tourism Policy for 2021-2025.

“We want to give more significance to tourism this time, and tourism of world-class. And I am confident that with this policy, Gujarat will be a global choice for tourism,” Rupani said. He added that he wanted amusement parks, like Disneyland, to come to Gujarat.

The new policy, he said, promises special incentives on large-scale tourism projects while aiming to introduce new opportunities like caravan tourism, MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions) tourism and rural-based experience tourism. Incentives for setting up tourism projects in the state will be applicable to only those projects that come up in the high priority tourism centres identified across 25 districts of the state under the policy, the CM added.

The entire districts of Kutch, Dwarka, Narmada, Gir-Somnath, Porbandar, Junagadh and Dang have been earmarked as high priority centres. In the remaining districts, some talukas have been set apart as the priority centres.

Among quantifiable objectives, the state hopes to double the employment in the sector, and increase the contribution of the sector towards state GDP to 5percent-7percent. Moreover, the state hopes to ensure that a minimum of 50percent of the new tourism projects and 30percent of the existing ones comply with the standards of sustainability. Additionally, Gujarat also hopes to maximise benefits by following “Atmanirbhar Bharat” and “Vocal for Local” calls of Prime Minister Narendra  Modi.

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