23-24-12-22 Daily-Kerala-KPSC Current Affairs

December 2022 turned out to be a happy month for hotels and resorts in Kochi as they saw an increase in number of foreign tourists, a first since the outbreak of Covid-19. Tourists from France, UK, Germany and US are now visiting the city.

The central government on Monday made it mandatory even for passengers, who take transit flights to India from high-risk countries, to have a RT-PCR negative certificate, but hoteliers here are confident that it is unlikely to have an adverse impact on the local tourism immediately.

According to hoteliers, bookings by foreigners has risen 20-30% since Covid. Foreigners prefer to visit Kerala during October-March while domestic tourists visit all round the year. Before Covid, of the total number of tourists coming to the state, 10% constituted foreign and 90% domestic. Now it is 6% foreign and 94% domestic tourists. The number of foreign tourists increased only in December last year.