TTDC has also decided to give on franchise some of its hotels in less popular places, creating more entertainment facilities at famous destinations, concentrating on providing basic infrastructure in lesser known but attractive destinations and strengthening and modernising facilities in renowned places, D Rajendran, director of tourism and managing director of Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation, told The Financial Express.

TTDC has a chain of 36 hotels in different locations providing 2,460 beds, 200 of them with a/c facility. Most of the hotels have full occupancy during peak seasons and close to 60 per cent during off-season. However, some of the hotels were built more on emotional or devotional grounds rather than economic feasibility and the corporation isexperimenting with franchising them to private operators.

It has already let on franchise its hotel in Mandapam and a few more in places like Sriperumbudur, Coonoor, Mettupalayam, Thirukazhukundram etc will be given to private operators.

The department is planning to give compulsory training to cooks in its hotels. The menu will be pre-fixed and the cost factor will be made flexible to ensure quality. Now the input cost for a food item is limited to 38 per cent.

Want of adequate infrastructure facilities in tourism centres is a perennial problem. ``Besides providing accommodation we are also now concentrating on making good roads, landscaping the areas and beautifying them.

Arrangements will be made to provide safe drinking water. Public convenience facilities will be maintained by Sulabh International instead of private contractors to ensure their maintenance", he said.

The department is also planning to set up wayside amenities along the national highways to provide travellers basicfacilities.

In order to make the department commercially more viable it is focusing on entertainment facilities like boat houses and eco-tourism. Its boat houses in Muttukkadu, Yercaud, Courtrallam, Udagamandalam and Kodaikanal are money spinners and such facilities are planned in Kumbhakonam and Tiruvaroor temple tanks.

A merry go-round and roller coaster are being set up in Udagamandalam.

Construction on a water merry-go round in Kanyakumari is under way. The proposed Rs 9-crore cable car project, to be operated by private operator on BOOT or BOO basis, proposed to be one of the fastest cable car facility in south India, will be a major attraction of the queen of hill stations.

Glass bottom boats are being acquired to promote eco-tourism among the coral reefs in the Gulf of Mannar. Boat services will be arranged by the fisheries department, through three boats the Tourism Department is planning to acquire, between Mandapam and Kurusadai.

Arrangements are being made for eco-tourism in the Nilgirisbiosphere also."Among the ambitious future plans are a `heritage on wheels' tour package in co-operation with the Southern Railways to link all pilgrim centres, and a destination south tour programme for the entire southern region covering all the four states in the region," Rajendran said.

Another focal point of the tourism department is to make Tamil Nadu familiar to the globetrotters. Tourists from Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore constitute the bulk of present visitors.