Tourism dept plans to get both new and existing ones surveyed by third party

Ahead of Dasara, the tourism department is on a mission to assess the quality of home stays across the state. Following complaints of illegal home stays popping up around various tourist destinations amid fresh applications seeking licences, the department wants to screen both the existing and upcoming home stays with the help of an external evaluating agency.

Karnataka has about 2,000 home stays classified under Gold and Silver class. However, it has been more than four years since the tourism department reviewed the condition of existing home stays and allowed setting up of new ones. “There are about 500 to 600 applications comprising both the new ones and existing home stays. All of them have to be reviewed before handing them a certificate which will boost their business and tourism activities,” said A Poovaiah, Joint Director, Tourism department.

The parameters for evaluation include hygiene, sanitation, ventilation, quality of services, affordability, safety standards and so on. “The department will not directly evaluate the home stays on these merits. Instead, a third party will be chosen by way of tendering and all applications seeking permission to set up home stays will be referred to an experts’ committee. They will visit the proposed place and assess the applicants. Based on the recommendations and final inspection by the department experts, we will classify them,” Poovaiah said.

The department has strict guidelines for setting up of home stays, but there have been several illegal home stays. “At times, house owners mislead officials, claiming that the guests are their distant relatives and officials cannot intervene. Unless people tip us off about such illegal home stays, we can’t initiate any action. Further, the tourists must insist on seeing the accreditation or certificate issued to them by the tourism department,” said a senior official.

The Scotland of India— Kodagu — has the highest number of home stays followed by Chikmagalur. Only Kodagu has Gold category home stays, which number 12. The other 13 districts have only Silver class home stays.

source: http://www.bangaloremirror.com / Bangalore Mirror / Home> Bangalore> Others / by Niranjan Kaggere, Bangalore Mirror Bureau / September 16th, 2014