The State government has taken new initiatives for promotion of tourism activities and exploring lesser known and virgin places of the State with assistance of about Rs. 1900 crores from Asian Development Bank (ADB).This was stated by Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur while launching the website and calendar of tourism department, here today. The website can be opened by clicking himachaltourism.gov.in.The calendar contains mixture of various pictures such as Rewalsar lake Mandi, Town Hall, Shimla, Phag Fair, Kinnaur, train on way to Shimla, Tirthan valley, Kullu, pine needle products prepared by women self-help groups, the Ridge Shimla, Western Tragopan, mountain biking in Diana Park, Mandi, Kullu Dussehra, Churdhar in Sirmaur and home stay in Kullu valley.Jai Ram Thakur said that the website have 100 percent mobile friendly design with single codebase for all devices which would not require to maintain separate site for mobile. He said that this site also has full screen image galleries to showcase tourism photographs with integrated content management system for easy to add/edit/delete content anywhere on website.
He said that the website has unique security features such as login brute force protection, intrusion detection system built into the core code and login captcha to detect and block bots.He directed the officers to focus more on publicizing the tourism potential of the State through social media such as youtube, tweeter, instagram, facebook etc. He said that new locations and destinations must be promoted through this website besides ensuring its regular updation to provide factual information to the people visiting the State. He also stressed the need to properly link home stays and hotels of the State to facilitate the tourists.The Chief Minister said that nature has blessed Himachal Pradesh with immense tourism potential which when fully exploited will generate more revenue to the state exchequer besides providing ample employment and self-employment avenues to the unemployed youth.Additional Chief Secretaries Dr. Shrikant Baldi and Ramsubhag Singh, Additional Principal Secretary to the CM Sanjay Kundu, Director, Tourism C.P. Verma, Managing Director, HPTDC Kumud Singh, Principal Private Secretary to the CM Vinay Singh, Additional Director, Tourism Manoj Kumar and Ravinder Makhaik were also present on the occasion among others.