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Kerala signs pact with St. Petersburg

Trivandrum - The agreement followed a road show Kerala Tourism conducted in the port city of St Petersburg on September 21.

Kerala Tourism has reached an agreement with St Petersburg's tourism to promote tourist inflow to the southern Indian state.
State Tourism Minister A.P Anil Kumar said that the department will soon sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the tourism department in the second-largest Russian city. The MoU will have concrete proposals to bring tourists from the Russian city to Trivandrum and Cochin.
The agreement followed a road show Kerala Tourism conducted in the port city of St Petersburg on September 21. The road show, which hosted trade and media meetings, saw huge footfalls from the Russian trade fraternity.
"We have received a positive response from the people here," said the minister.
"In 2014, the tourist arrivals from Russia were 35,010. With this road show, we are expecting a perceptible increase in the arrivals of Russian tourists," says Kerala Tourism Secretary G Kamala Vardhana Rao.
The tie up with St. Petersburg tourism is part of a wider move to attract more tourists from Russia to the state.
The department has to set up a formal association with the Russian Tourism and Culture Ministry along with the tourism departments of Goa and Uttarkhand in this regard.
The idea of formulating a board comprising the Government of India, the Ministry of Tourism, the Indian Embassy in Russia and the Tourism Departments of Kerala, Goa and Uttarkhand will be taken up with the federal government.
The key areas under the purview of the board will include a marketing campaign to increase the arrival of Russian tourists to India through various cultural and tourism promotional programmes.
Talks were held between Olga Yarilova, Head of Tourism and Regional Policy, Department of the Ministry of Culture of Russian Federation, and P I Sheikh Pareeth, director, Kerala Tourism, at the Ministry of Culture, Russian Federation.
The Russian delegation raised issues such as reducing the visa fees and the airport fee incurred on chartered flights from Russia to India, which will be considered and taken up with the authorities concerned.