Agra tour operators moan loss at hand of rivals

Vijay Upadhyay
Agra. Is the Taj Mahal in Rajasthan? Most of us would quickly say no to this seemingly obvious question, but not the tour operators of Rajasthan, who have included this magnificent monument of Uttar Pradesh in their "Rajasthan Heritage" tour packages.

A cursory glance at the packages offered by various tour operators based in Rajasthan and Delhi makes it clear how the tour operators based in these neighbouring States are taking advantage of the fact that Agra being located on the borders of both Delhi (196 kilometres) and Rajasthan (235 kilometres), is easily accessible through a day-trip from either Delhi or Jaipur, offering "Rajasthan Heritage Tour Packages with Taj Mahal".

In contrast to the Agra based travel agencies that "honestly" mention Jaipur and Delhi as parts of a separate "Golden Triangle" tour package, a large number of the outbound tour packages from Jaipur include Agra as a part of the tour, apparently snatching away the business from the hands of the Agra tour operators and hoteliers, by bringing the tourists to Agra only on day-trips.

Talking to this newspaper, Aargee Tours director Rakesh Garg said the Rajasthan-based tour operators actively "usurped" the business that was truly the share of Agra travel industry by projecting the location of the Taj Mahal in Rajasthan incorrectly among unassuming foreign tourists every year during the tourism season.

As a result, he said, a major part of the tourism business of Agra was diverted to Rajasthan by these tour operators who picked the tourists from Delhi and took them on trips through Rajasthan, including Agra in their packages.

He said this way the Agra travel industry was deprived of its share and most of the business secured by the tour operators of this town was through the few charters landing in Agra and the small groups and "free individual tourists" coming directly from Delhi, who did not offer the same business potential as large groups of tourists.

As a retaliatory action, he said, the Agra travel operators were also thinking of launching tour packages that included Jaipur and Delhi as part of the packages. But being in mid-way from Delhi, on the route to Jaipur offered a distinct disadvantage to the Agra-based tour operators that made this entire exercise fruitless.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Woman torched to death by inlaws on International Women's Day in India

AGRA.               It could serve as a well-placed slap in the face of the the groups of so-called women's rights activists who all too recently celebrated International Women’s Day, fervently praising the contribution made by women to the society and vowing to prevent violence against the feminine gender comfortably ensconced in luxurious clubs and hotels.    While the world was busy celebrating women’s day, a young girl was murdered in cold-blood, torched to death by her in-laws in Kayamganj town of Farrukhabad district of Uttar Pradesh, alongwith a 6-month fetus inside her, just three years after marriage.    Two weeks have passed since the grisly murder but the local police appears to be in no hurry to catch the absconding in-laws who doused the girl in kerosene and left her to burn and die on the street, making good their escape while the locals awaited for the police to arrive. Meanwhile, the victim’s mother Archana Sharma has suffered from a strok...
Read more

Chambal Bandit for 30 years, Nirbhay retires to the Himalayas

VIJAY UPADHYAY ETAWAH/BHIND. For 30 years, he ruled the Chambal with a steady hand but weakened by age and continually dogged by the police, Nirbhay Gujjar, the last remaining edifice of the old stock of bandits from India’s own “Wild-Wild West”, may have at last taken a peaceful retirement in the Himalayas, that he was vying for a long time. Reports filtering in from the Chambal ravines of Etawah district of Uttar Pradesh and the adjoining Bhind of Madhya Pradesh indicate that this most feared bandit of Chambal has finally given up the ghost, following the rising waters of the river and the depleting strength of his gang due to regular encounters by the police of these two states. According to the residents of the villages of Etawah, Bhind & Kalpi, Jaloun districts, Nirbhay has not been seen in these parts for quite some time and his regular contacts in the villages are no longer active. The gang has even gone untraceable on the electronic surveillance net of the police. Sources ...
Read more

Trade tax hits Agra`s dal mills

The 4.5 per cent trade tax has reduced incomes to merely Rs 2,500-3,000 per metric tonne Vishal Sharma New Delhi/ Agra. There was a time when the “dal mills” of Agra catered for the processing needs of faraway states like Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Today, this industry is just a sorry remnant of its prosperous past. Once spread all across the town with 150 units working in tandem to process over 400 tonnes of pulses a day and a clientele spread throughout the country, Agra’s dal mill industry has now shrunk to barely 30-35 units processing little more than 75 tonnes of pulses. The repercussions of the weakening pulse of this “pulse-processing industry” can be felt in the machine-tool forging units in the Nunhai industrial area of the town, where production of dal mill equipment has dropped to less than a quarter of what was produced earlier. These units now lay more stress on producing flour mill equipment. According to Agra Dal Mill Association General Secret...
Read more