Having succeeded in promoting the state as one of the top tourist destinations, Kerala has now embarked on a novel initiative to develop spiritual and medical tourism to attract foreign travellers.
And the government is banking on none other than the 'hugging saint' Mata Amritanandamayi to promote spiritual tourism.
State tourism officials say the domestic and foreign tourist arrivals to Kerala might even touch a record 10 million thanks to Amma (as Amritanandamayi is popularly called) whose 50th birthday celebration was a huge four-day event at Kochi.
Nearly half a million people, most of them devotees of Amma, had congregated at Kochi for a spiritual summit last week. Among them nearly 8,000 were foreign nationals.
"Spiritual leaders like Amritanandamayi is boosting Kerala tourism in a big way. We will now initiate steps to promote spiritual and medical tourism in the state," Kerala Tourism Development Corporation director Alkesh Kumar Sharma told rediff.com.
According to Sharma, the large number of Amritanandamayi's followers, especially from the foreign countries are potential tourists to Kerala. "They are the pilgrim tourists. Spiritual tourism in Kerala would leap further because of the clean and peaceful religious environment that the state provides," the official said.
Along with spiritual tourism, the government also plans to utilise Kerala's effective medical infrastructure to launch what officials say "medical tourism."
Already, the state government has launched a promotional campaign on Kerala's medical tourism potential at the International Tourism Exchange in Berlin a few months back.
According to officials, a dental filling that costs euro 400 in Austria would cost only euro 10 in a Kerala hospital; or a hip replacement surgery that costs $12,000 in the US could be performed at less than one third the cost in the state.
Sharma says some of the finest hospitals include the Kochi-based Lakeshore Hospital and Research Centre, the Kozhikode-based Malabar Institute of Medical Sciences and the Thiruvananthapuram-based Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences.
"We want to encourage foreign travelers to come here for low cost treatment at these high quality hospitals and recuperate in one of the best locations in the world," Sharma said.
Official statistics say tourism is one of the key economic drivers in Kerala. Tourist arrival in the state touched 5.5 million during 2001, generating revenue of Rs 5000 crore (Rs 50 billion), which is 6.29 per cent of the state's GDP.
It also provides direct and indirect employment to 700,000 people, Sharma pointed out.
While nearly seven million tourists visited God's Own Country in 2002, the first six months of 2003 clocked at least four million tourist arrivals.
Earlier in the year, World Travel and Tourism Council announced that tourism in Kerala would grow by 11.6 per cent per annum over the coming decade.