Kodagu district which was one of the first districts in South India to find the home stay business an alternative to the traditional ways of tourism, has now threaded another path and quite astute one at that. Most home-stays are now compatible with environmental rules delighting users from high value catchment areas like Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai.
Most importantly, tussles between Home stays and resorts with various panchayats, district administration and villagers about environmental hazards have found a logical conclusion. People in eco-sensitive areas in Kodagu district, specially close to Madikeri, harboured antipathy to home-stays and resorts for environmental reasons.
“It had to happen, Kodagu thrives on its natural attributes, its orange, coffee and spice gardens, misty mountains and perennial water streams. If these attributes were polluted that is the end of the district as well as the business of homestays. So we asked our members to strengthen their environmental compliance levels. We have been working on these lines for over an year and now we have 90% compliance in over 65% of home stays and few more were on the way to higher compliance,” Nalini Achchaih of the Kodagu district Home Stay association told dna.
There are about 200 homestays in Kodagu district and over 50% of them are in and around Madikeri. About 45% of them are registered while many of them are in the process of doing so. “Many of our members were suffering due to delay in registering their home stays due to the strict environmental and administrative standards, but they have worked diligently towards it and have achieved high level of compliance,” Nalini said.
“The home-stays in Madikeri are such good stress busters. Many of us go there once in every other month, I and some of my friends used to go only to the few registered home-stays, but now we have so many registered establishments and even environmental-compliant,” said Ajit Shetty, a techie from Bangalore.
Madikeri also hosts some corporate home-stays like Tamara Resorts. “The standards we impose on ourselves are stringent. Our new-gen guests patronize only establishments that are legal and environmental-friendly. There were some teething problems initially, but we have rectified them, specially the needs of the villages situated around us. We have opened up new road for them and installed a waste management system,” Senthil Kumar N, chief executive officer of Tamara Resorts, said.
source: http://www.dnaindia.com / DNA / Home> Bangalore> Report / by M Raghuram / Place:Madikeri, Agency:DNA / Wednesday – January 15th, 2014
