MYSORE, October 1: Anticipating a large number of visitors to Mysore for Dasara, the Dasara Festival Committee is striving to ensure that tourists are properly guided during their 10-day tour. The aim is to make their stay memorable with information useful to them being made available in quick time.
As information about the city and tourist destinations around it was crucial to tourists, over one lakh booklets with complete information about Dasara events and tourist destinations and 50,000 city maps for quick navigation of popular tourist sites were being specially printed for the festive season.
Tourist information material will be kept at all tourist kiosks put up by the Tourism and Police departments at key locations here and on the highways for distribution.
Speaking to The Hindu, Dasara Special Officer and Deputy Commissioner C. Shikha, who is coordinating arrangements for the event, said that the specially-printed brochures and maps would be distributed free even among hotels here. Hotels would be asked to hand them over to their guests.
She said that steps had been taken to help international tourists touring Mysore and its surroundings through 45 tourism counsellors of foreign origin who have been appointed for the first time.
“If a German tourist wants to know more about Mysore, Dasara events and tourist sites, he will be assigned a tourism counsellor who can speak in German. Arrangements have been made with support from colleges and university,” she said.
Ms. Shikha said that foreign tourists and also domestic tourists can call toll free number 1077 (control room at the Deputy Commissioner’s office here) for information in languages known to or spoken by them. The control room will, in turn, connect their calls to tourism counsellors who can speak in their languages.
The contact numbers of tourism counsellors of foreign origin had not been disclosed for security reasons and therefore, the toll free number is being linked for tourist information, she said.
She said that mobile applications on Mysore Dasara had been downloaded by over 400 users.
The applications will give information about tourist locations, contact details for services such as food, accommodation, travel and emergency services such as hospitals.
Japanese tourists
Thanks to Dasara promotion abroad by tour and travel operators on behalf of the Department of Tourism, more international tourists are expected this time.
Tourism Department Deputy Director K.S. Shivalingappa told The Hindu that 40 Japanese tourists were coming for the grand finale.
“We got information from our office in Bangalore that a Japanese group is coming to watch Jamboo Savari,” he said.
Sources in the department here said that more foreign tourist groups are likely this year because of promotional activities through overseas travel and tour shows. “Marketing abroad has been done in an aggressive manner this time to bring more foreign tourists to Mysore,” they said.
