Surfing is a 13 Billion Dollar Industry in the World
Mangaluru: A media interaction on promoting beach tourism was held at the Panambur beach here on September 26.
The CEO, Panambur Beach Tourism Development Project Yathish Baikampady said, “To develop the beaches we should promote them by organizing surfing events. Beach tourism is highly profitable, to promote our beaches we need to organize conferences in Mangaluru. When delegates from around the country come here and get good hospitality, next time they will bring their families and come to Mangaluru”.
Entrepreneur M R Shetty said that to promote beach tourism we need to stop open defecation in the beaches. People come from other districts, states and countries, if we cannot stop people defecating in the open, promoting beach tourism is a difficult task.
Responding to M R Shetty, about open defecation, Yathish said that the Mangalore city corporation has started an open defecation free campaign which will surely help to solve the problem. First, we need to catch hold of those who rent their houses to migrant workers and serve notice to them because more than 10 persons stay in a small house where, when one uses the toilet, others go and defecate in the open. We need to report the offenders to the police, once the police call the owner of the house to the police station, he will be cautious in renting his house and automatically open defecation will stop. Politicians will not involve in such initiatives because of the vote bank.
He also said that we organize many programmes like the beach festival, kite festival, and surfing without giving much publicity for people around the world to know about it. There are areas such as Panambur where the Mogaveera Grama Sabha has banned open defecation, we should appreciate their initiative.
Member of the Panambur Beach Tourism Development Project Sudheer said that we have taken a lot of initiatives to promote beach tourism from the last three years but nothing has happened so far. The district tourism committee, state tourism committee and Kanara Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a number of meetings to develop tourism but nothing happened. Beach tourism has a great potential since we have beautiful beaches, infrastructure and road connectivity. We had initiated surfing which was introduced in India in Mulki, now we have introduced the Sasihithlu beach exclusively for surfing. Earlier no one was familiar of the Sasihithlu beach, because of the support from our local minister, the tourism minister had sanctioned the necessary funds immediately.
He further said, “The surfing event has erased some of the negative points from the minds of people. Because of the coverage of the surfing event from all the local and Indian media, many people started calling us from around the world. Things are getting positive, the surfing industry is a 13 billion dollar industry. Some of the destinations in the world are surviving only because of surfing. Surfing is very thrilling. After the surfing event, people from around the world started to come here. We want to attract international tourists. One of the observers from the international surfing has suggested us to have an international surfing league in Mangaluru. We have plans for that and we will officially announce the date. The observer had come along with his wife and they had a very good time here, her only complaint was of the open defecation which she noticed while she was jogging early in the morning. If such a situation continues it is a black mark for us. So we need to stop such activities.
President of the Kanara Chamber of Commerce and Industry Jeevan Saldanha assured his full support in this regard. Commissioner of MCC Mohammed Nazir, former president of KCCI Ram Mohan Pai Maroor and others were also present.