Uttar Pradesh’s ‘Paying Guest’ Scheme to Promote Tourism in Ayodhya

January 5, 2024

The Uttar Pradesh government is transforming Ayodhya under its ‘Navya Ayodhya’ project. Within this, the state tourism department’s Paying Guest scheme aims to upgrade accommodation and cuisine experiences for visitors.

About the Scheme

The scheme focuses on enabling local residents to offer paying guest facilities and homestays for tourists, devotees and travelers. It taps into the rich Awadh culinary heritage to provide unique dining experiences featuring millet dishes.

Significance of the Scheme

The Paying Guest scheme opens up various income and self-employment avenues for locals. From hosting to cooking traditional Awadhi meals, new jobs get created around Ayodhya’s tourism expansion under the government’s push.

Tourism platforms show Ayodhya emerging as a top destination with significant rise in travel searches. Hotel rates are already surging, with tents costing 20-30k per night being sold out for Jan 20-27 during the temple opening. Big brands are planning over 350 crore investment in hotels anticipating an influx of tourists. Around 300-500k daily visitors are expected once the temple opens, with a 10x rise in tourism projected by 2024.
Domestic tourism in Ayodhya already jumped from 0.17 million in 2021 to 23.6 million in 2022. New semi-high speed trains like Vande Bharat Express have been launched to improve connectivity. Airlines will run more flights as lakhs of devotees are likely to visit post inauguration. The Paying Guest Scheme is expected to leverage this potential to boost the income of the locals.

Key Details

Those wanting certification need to provide property documents, maps, IDs, tax information and room images among other details.
Guidance from state leadership coupled with coordination between the district administration, development authority and tourism department is enabling smooth approvals processing for homestay applications.
So far over 460 people have obtained certificates under the scheme out of 600 applicants.
Room bookings are enabled via the Holy Ayodhya mobile app developed by the Ayodhya Development Authority. Tourists can discover availability, pricing and amenities before booking preferred homestays online.

1,000 Homestays Target

The state has set a target of registering 1,000 houses in Ayodhya under the scheme. Proactive processing of submissions is underway by various agencies to achieve this goal.

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