Kerala Tourism said on Friday that it will now target northern States in a big way to increase the inflow of domestic tourists.

Kerala Tourism is now actively targeting States such as Punjab, Chandigarh, Haryana and West Bengal to increase domestic arrivals. “We are aggressively looking at these markets and this road show here is part of our strategy to increase arrivals from these States,” Kerala Tourism Director M. Sivasankar said.

He admitted that limited access from northern States to Kerala was a major factor in low arrival from Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh. Mr. Sivasankar said that Kerala Tourism expected a revenue of over Rs.12,500 crore in 2008, which is an increase of over 10 per cent over last year’s revenue. International arrivals, mainly from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, in Kerala, recorded 20.37 per cent jump in 2007 over the previous year’s figures and domestic tourist arrivals marked a 5.92 per cent increase.