To submit Spice Route final report to UNESCO
Steena Joy – Mumbai
Kerala Tourism is in the final stages of acquiring land for the Maritime Museum which is part of the Muziris heritage project. The 50 acre land bank is estimated to cost Rs 10 crore and is located at Paravoor in Kollam district of Kerala.
Speaking exclusively to Express TravelWorld, Anupama T V, additional director (general), Kerala Tourism, revealed, “Kerala Tourism is finalising the land for the Maritime Museum. Once the land is acquired, the construction will be given to a government agency. The Maritime Museum will cover information about the boats and ships used on the Spice Route and will be more like an interactive journey. We have signed up with UNESCO for the Spice Route project and on our behalf UNESCO will invite all the countries who were on the Spice Route to contribute artefacts to the Maritime Museum. We will submitting the final report of the Spice Route project to UNESCO.”
Meanwhile the Pattanam Museum, one of the museums in the Muziris Project is expected to open in the first quarter of 2016.
Commenting on the hop-on-hop-off service started by Kerala Tourism a year ago, Anupama informed that the response has been encouraging. “The hop-on-hop-off boat and water taxi service presently operates in the backwaters of Kochi and in the Muziris region (which is an integral part of the Spice Route), and we expect the visitor numbers to increase in the coming months. Presently, the service is being operated by Kerala Tourism Infrastructure (KTIL) and uses three boats and two water taxis. The tour starts at Paravoor and ends at Kottapuram and stops at all the eight jetties en route. There is one tour every 45 minutes. After a year, the service will be handed over to another operator selected through an open tendering process,” she added.