{"id":12830,"date":"2018-08-26T17:22:55","date_gmt":"2018-08-26T17:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12830"},"modified":"2018-08-26T17:22:55","modified_gmt":"2018-08-26T17:22:55","slug":"tourism-in-flood-hit-kerala-grinds-to-a-halt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12830","title":{"rendered":"Tourism in flood-hit Kerala grinds to a halt"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The tourism industry in India’s southern Kerala state has been hit hard as the state reels<\/a> from the worst flooding<\/a> in over a century that has left more than 300 people dead.<\/p>\n

Incessant rain since August 8 caused the worst floods and triggered landslides, with the death toll reaching 445 with the discovery of 28 more bodies on Sunday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tourism accounts for 12 percent of Kerala’s economy and t<\/span>he flooding that forced\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>tourists to cancel their trips, has brought loss to the hospitality business owners in the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I think about 75 to 80 percent of cancellations have happened during that period,”\u00a0Ellias Najeeb,\u00a0president of the Confederation of Kerala\u00a0Tourism Industry, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

“And all the tourists that were staying in the affected areas have gone back.”<\/p>\n

The outlook does not look great either. A similar percentage of September bookings have been cancelled.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The flood damaged roads, rail-lines and airports, making it hard for travelers to reach their destination.<\/p>\n

The biggest impact will reportedly be felt from October when the peak tourist season for Kerela begins.<\/p>\n

Those in the industry expect a 20 to 25 percent drop for the season as a whole.<\/p>\n

However, Kerala’s\u00a0Tourism Minister,\u00a0<\/span>Kadakampally Surendran<\/span>,<\/span>\u00a0is confident the visitors will return.<\/p>\n

“Our industry is badly affected, it’s devasted. But I’m confident we will get our former glory back. It is going to take a lot of work,” said Surendran.<\/p>\n

The rainfall during the June-September season was recorded as more than 40 percent higher than normal. That forced authorities to release water from dozens of full dams.<\/p>\n

But even as the water receded,\u00a0dozens of people are still missing and around a million are sheltering in thousands of makeshift relief camps, state officials said.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The tourism industry in India’s southern Kerala state has been hit hard as the state reels from the worst flooding in over a century that has left more than 300 people dead. Incessant rain since August 8 caused the worst floods and triggered landslides, with the death toll reaching 445 with the discovery of 28…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}