The Department of Tourism, Government of West Bengal, recently received the prestigious SKOCH award GOLD, under the category Tourism and Culture for Transformational Performance During Covid 19. The Tourism Department among various activities, highlighted four of their unique initiatives during the Pandemic times. Hon’ble Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, tweeted from her official twitter handle about this feat and congratulated all officials and members for their hard work and dedication.
The ‘Paryatan Sahayata Prakalpa’ is a pioneering scheme undertaken by the department to provide financial support to the stakeholders in tourism and hospitality industry and provide assistance to the tourism units by recommending Working Capital Loan from banks. The department even helped ‘loan interest subvention’ to the extent of 50% of the interest for first year subject to maximum 4% of total loan amount. Stakeholders got such loans in three categories with maximum amounts of up to Rs 50,000, between 50,000-5,00,000 and 5,00,001-Rs 10,00,000 respectively. A large number of people were helped by this venture and it was widely circulated among the stakeholders and the District Magistrates to reach out the assistance to maximum number of beneficiaries.
To cope with the Pandemic situation and the downturn in tourism industry, one of the hardest hit industries due to COVID 19, the Tourism Department designed detailed SOP for the Tourism/ Hospitality Industry that included guidelines for sight-seeing at tourist spots, for taking booking for tourism services, for transport services relating to Tourism, for receiving and managing guests, for IEC, for capacity building. These guidelines and measures were extensively used by the hospitality units, city clubs and officers’ clubs.
The Tourism Department even coordinated expansion of bed capacity in private health facilities by creating ‘Satellite Health Facilities,’in a tie-up with the Hotel Association and the Health Department during the 2nd pandemic wave. More than 600 beds were identified across 16 hotels that were turned into satellite centres. A vaccination drive was taken up for tourism industry professionals, formally inaugurated in June 2021. The initiative targeted a total of 6 lakh people. Hospitality and Tourism sector employees from all fields including restaurants, small eateries, food chains, delivery personnel, tourists and travel agents, guides, tourist facilitators were benefitted from this vaccination drive.
Big kudos to the relentless effort of all related to the Tourism sector, that helped the Tourism Department win such a prestigious honour.
Bengal Beckons 