YACHTING FESTIVAL, A TERRIBLE WASTE OF PUBLIC RESOURCES.
This should be a good time for our head-in- the-clouds tourism officials to get Back to Basics. Let us learn from the recent HOT AIR BALLOON FESTIVAL at Araku. Rs. 5,00,00,000 spent on damp squib balloon festival. Who benefited? A few reporters, some officials, the event organizers and their friends and family and a few of those who sucked up to appropriate persons in the political hierarchy in Vijayawada. We did not even sell Vizag to the foreign balloon crew. They had no idea about what Vizag or Araku was all about. What about tourists? We got perhaps less than a hundred real extra tourists on one day at ARAKU! So what was the cost of acquisition per tourist? You work it out! Remember the tamasha about Heli-Tourism? There was so much hullabaloo about it, lots of our money spent but within a month it has gone phut! Buddhist tourism all talk no action With fanfare and trumpetry two "interpretation centers" were built at Thotlakonda and Bavikonda a