Shillong, April 11: The two-day Northeast tourism summit here, titled “Gateway to prosperity”, drew up a “roadmap” for developing tourism in the Northeast.
The roadmap, according to North Eastern Council advisor (banking) and in-charge (industries) F.R. Ingty, would examine the possibility of setting up rural tourism to develop villages as tourist centres.
The two-day summit was jointly organised by the NEC and the Association of Tour Operators of Northeast India at Hotel Polo Towers. The summit ended today, with participants from the Northeast and from some South Asian countries trying to hammer out a working formula on culture and heritage tourism.
“The whole idea is to sell the concept of culture and heritage tourism,” Ingty said, adding that the summit recommendations strongly advocated the need to sensitise villages. Ingty said the summit stressed the urgent need to start a forum to facilitate mediation between the government and the private sector.
Other recommendations favoured infrastructural growth for adventure, wildlife and ecological tourism. Most of the participants at the tourism summit felt that the concept of “tourist villages” in Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam has not been explored properly, but said the thrust should be more towards “developing villages as culture and heritage centres instead of singling out a particular village”. However, Meghalaya’s Nongkynrih village, on the way to Sohra, came up for special mention and most participants said they were impressed by the traditional bow-and-arrow-making skills there.
For tourists from as far as Belgium and Thailand, a few states such as Meghalaya — specially people’s lifestyles — proved to be “an extraordinary experience”. For Mario Almeriogigna, a tourist from Belgium, “Being in Shillong is not like being in India. It is very different from other states”.
NEC financial adviser U.N. Majhi told The Telegraph that the summit was “a step forward” to displaying “unique local talents” to the outside world. He was convinced that the summit has managed to propagate the concept of “cultural tourism” in a big way.
Tourism finance corporation of India general manager Rajender Sharma, who was in Shillong, told The Telegraph that Meghalaya and some northeastern states could cash in on the relatively unexplored culture and traditional lifestyles.