Southern Tamil Nadu can attract more tourists - Madurai last spot for tourism in South Tamil Nadu currently

While Tamil Nadu saw around 30 lakh foreign tourists during 2010, only 35,000 of them visited Madurai. As the city is the gateway to the southern districts, the numbers of foreign tourists further down south are bound to decline even further.

Also, many tourists head to Kerala after an over-night stay at Madurai rather than head to southern districts.

While the Meenakshi Temple and King Tirumalai Naick Palace (Mahal) garner the lion's share of tourists coming to Madurai, there is also a rich collection of Jain vestiges, awareness of which is very limited. Many are in remote locations such as Arittappati a hillock located around 35 km east of Madurai.

Despite the presence of iconic tourist locations such as the majestic Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple, grand Chettinad palaces and famous waterfalls, the tourism potential of the southern districts of Tamil Nadu is far from fully harnessed, opine stakeholders in the industry.

With little investment and a major publicity campaign, these places could boost the inflow of tourists to the region.

With a new Government having taken charge, they have expressed hope that fresh initiatives would be launched to fully harness the tourism potential of the region.

With a little boost to infrastructure and an awareness campaign among tourist operators and if the local community could be persuaded and made to understand the benefits of tourism, more palaces could be opened for viewing. This could increase the tourist flow.

SanaTourism.com - A Madurai Tourism Website - Tamil Nadu and South Tamil Nadu