Mysuru palace recorded the highest footfall of tourists during May in recent years indicating that the sector was on the course to recovery.
As many as 5,49,452 tourists visited the palace in May this year, which is one of the all-time high figures for the month in the recent years, including pre-pandemic times. The month of April saw 3,71,566 visitors and there were nearly 9.21 lakh in the first two months of the current financial year.
The figures for May 2023 are in contrast to 3,69,070 tourists who had visited the palace in May in 2022. The number of tourists who visited the palace in May 2019 – pre-pandemic year – was 4,83,883.
C. Narayana Gowda of Hotel Owners’ Association said the overall turnover in the tourism sector for 2022-23 was encouraging while the first two months – April and May – of the financial year 2023-24 saw robust traffic. The completion of the Bengaluru-Mysuru Expressway has also contributed to the rise in tourism traffic and this is expected to increase further, he added.
The iconic palace is one of the most-visited tourist attractions in the country and figures of tourist footfall at it are indicators of the health of the sector in the region.
The tourism sector took a hit with the outbreak of the COVID-19 and the palace was shut and out of bounds for visitors as tourism had come to a halt in May 2020. Though the sector opened up in a phase-wise manner, there was a new wave which peaked during May 2021 and hence the palace was closed for tourists during that month again and had no visitors.
But since then the footfall has been encouraging, giving much-needed buoyancy to the sector which generates direct and indirect jobs pegged at around 80,000 in Mysuru and surrounding regions, and the annual turnover is pegged at around ₹1,200 crore.
The month of May being summer holidays tends to draw a large number of tourists from across the country and is one of the busiest months as far as tourism sector is concerned. It is also peak tourism season for Mysuru apart from the months coinciding with Dasara (September/October) followed by December coinciding with Christmas holidays through New Year.
Sources on the Mysuru Palace Board said that this year’s figure for May is one of the highest for any month and augurs well for the tourism sector.
That the sector is on the course to recovery is also evident in the figures of the Palace Board. As many as 33,92,274 visitors were registered during 2022-23 with the highest being in December when 5,39,448 tourists visited the palace. The 2022-23 figures of nearly 3.4 million tourists is close to the pre-COVID peak traffic of nearly 3.6 million tourists who visited Mysuru palace in 2019-20 before the pandemic.
