Keen to shrug off the impact of various challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic and a change in weather pattern, in the previous seasons, Kumarakom – a village nestled in the backwater landscape of Kottayam – is ringing in a new tourism season this October with an influx of foreigners.
Home to a chain of luxury resorts and homestays, Kumarakom now reverberates with a party mood on the streets with the return of tourists just like the pre-pandemic era. The hotels and houseboats are receiving forward bookings while the prospective arrival of North Indian guests during the upcoming festive season will further add to the momentum.
The State-run Responsible Tourism (RT) Mission, for instance, has witnessed an unprecedented surge in the bookings for its village-life experience packages. “As many as 1,480 bookings have been received for Kumarakom while discussions are on with a handful of other groups as well. Given the current momentum, the RT Mission will have to run the packages this season at least till the half of 2024,’’ said K. Rupesh Kumar, State Coordinator, RT Mission Kerala.
The hospitality industry too is counting on a huge influx of guests, primarily from Europe, following the ease of restrictions on global traffic and a favourable climate. “We had a fairly good number of foreign guests in September too. The guest arrivals are expected to go up further from the second half of October onwards,” said K.Arun Kumar, general manager of a luxury resort here.
The monsoon season, according to him, did not pan out on expected lines but the current trend of surging footfall is likely to extend till March next year. Typically, the rainy season represents the peak tourism season for the region but things took a turn for the worse this time with July and August receiving scanty showers, extending a lean patch that had begun since the pandemic outbreak.
The surging movement of tourists, meanwhile, has stimulated the local economy as the 100-odd houseboat operators, their crew and the local traders here are eager to regain some of the lost ground. “The advance bookings for houseboats, which usually thrive on such peak seasons, has touched almost 70%. The business will hit a record once the cruises start lining up in Kochi’’, said Soji J. Alumparambil, secretary, Houseboat Owners Welfare Society.
After two depressing years, Kumarakom plotted its path out of the pandemic-induced crisis last year by riding a boom in domestic tourism. As per estimates by the District Tourism Promotion Council in Kottayam, the village destination received 1.7 lakh domestic visitors in 2022 as against just 27,000 foreign guests. In the latest survey conducted by hospitality consulting firm Hotelivate, Kumarakom also topped in revenue per room available in the country at Rs. 11,758, followed by Rishikesh in Uttarakhand.
