Tourism
The long coastline of Kerala is inextricably entwined with the culture, life and traditions of the state. Memories of early seafarers and traders have faded, but boats of various types and styles have survived. Kerala's beaches, or Kovalam to be more specific, were rediscovered by back-packers and tan-seekers in the sixties. Hordes of hippies followed in the seventies. That started the transformation of the casual fishing village into a busy tourist destination. In 2002, there were 66 hotels in Kovalam, and that too in a place that is just 16 km from the state capital Thiruvanthapuram.
From a measly 29,000 overseas tourists visiting Kerala in 1979, the number rose to 225,000 in 2000 and the number of tourists is growing rapidly. Foreign tourist arrivals in Kerala in 2006 was 428,534, an increase of 23.68% over the previous year. Domestic tourist arrivals were 6,271,724, an increase of 5.47% over the previous year. The ABC of Kerala tourism is ayurveda, beaches, (backwater) canals.
While details of incoming tourists are not available, indications of a survey are that domestic tourists are high from Gujarat and Maharashtra both located on the west coast of India, and international tourists are mostly from Europe. Beaches were amongst the favourite destination of foreign tourists.
Lying between north latitudes 8°18' and 12°48' . Kerala is well within the humid equatorial tropics. The mean annual temperatures range from 25.0–27.5 °C in the coastal lowlands. With 120–140 rainy days per year, Kerala is influenced by the seasonal heavy rains of the southwest summer monsoon.
Read more about this topic: Beaches In Kerala
Famous quotes containing the word tourism:
“In the middle ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.”
—Robert Runcie (b. 1921)