Online booking for Rann Utsav begins May 1 this year

In a bid to attract more tourists to Rann Utsav 2014, the state tourism department will open the online bookings for the desert festival as early as May 1, five months ahead of the usual date. The department also plans to scale up festival to 90 days considering the fact that the number of visitors doubled last year.

"Having received 77 per cent of our bookings online, we will open online bookings from Gujarat's Foundation Day, which falls on May 1. In 47 days, we received a tourist footfall of 20,000 in the tent city area while around 1.1 lakh tourists visited and stayed at the White Rann area. Around 60 per cent of the domestic tourists came from cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata while 25 per cent were from Gujarat. Around 1,000 tourists came from Finland, the US and the UK," said Nirav Munshi, Manager, Hotel, Tours and Travels, Tourism Corporation of Gujarat Limited (TCGL).

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