Tourist numbers on the rise in DK since 3 years

Mangaluru: Since the last three years, the number of tourists visiting Dakshina Kannada district has increased steadily. The tourism department has aimed for 2 crore tourists for the present year.

DK district has several religious places, five beaches and 15 tourist attractions and by calculating the number of visitors to the various locations, the tourism department comes up with the statistics.

With the aim to provide information to tourists arriving to the district, a ‘tourist information centre’ has been already opened at the Mangaluru International Airport. There are incharges here who interact with the arriving tourists and provide them with information regarding various tourist locations in the district.

Information board containing information to the various important tourist attractions in the district are also displayed at the KSRTC bus stand in the city. The tourism department has come forward to start a tourist information centre at NITK as well.

This time, there has been a rise in the rain intensity along the coast including DK district, which has had a slight adverse effect on the tourism sector. The Pilikula Dr Shivaram Karanth Biological Park was visited by more than 95,000 tourists within the months of June and July. It attracts more than 2,000 visitors daily. Although it is the rainy season, there wasn’t much depletion of crowd at the beaches in the district. The beaches attracted thousands of tourists during the weekends. Since the sea had turned violent, visitors were not allowed to venture out into the water. Nonetheless, there were scores of tourists who visited the beaches.

New attractions at the zoo

New animals have been introduced at Pilikula Biological Park which is the only zoo in the city. Giant flightless bird Rhea, an animal resembling a deer and Oriental Dart bird is expected to arrive at the zoo soon from Thiruvananthapuram. In the same way, Pilikula zoo will be providing king cobra, bison and Whittaker’s boa to Thiruvananthapuram zoo.

Rise in tourist numbers

The number of tourists visiting Dakshina Kannada district is increasing from year to year. In comparison to the last three years, more tourists are coming every year to enjoy the beauty here. In order to gain the attention of the visitors, the department will be implementing various plans in the coming days – Sudheer Gowda, DK District Tourism Consultant