Incredible India tourism website to be available in 11 foreign languages

"Our website is going to be in 11 languages including Russian, Chinese, Portuguese, Arabic, French and Spanish to make it helpful for foreign tourists," Tourism Secretary Parvez Dewan said at the Incredible India calendar launch in New Delhi.

Besides, the Tourism Ministry website will also have new features like virtual tours and audio guides of prominent tourist places in the country.

"Eight cities including Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, Jaipur, Ahmedabad have been covered by virtual tours and our aim is to cover at least one place of every state in two years in the virtual tour programme," Dewan said.

Hoping for a growth in foreign and domestic tourists in the current year, he said, "We are expecting an increase of about 5 percent in the foreign tourist arrivals this year while the number of domestic tourist is start increasing by 18 to 19 percent every year."

The new calendar, launched by the Tourism Secretary, has 24 pages with each month having two pages displaying pictures of state tourist attractions.

The calendar has also carried 12 pictures of the last year's edition at the bottom.

"In this calendar, we have 36 pictures of 35 states and UTs. The biggest state, UP has two pictures," he said.

The pictures have been arranged to match the popular festivals of the month.

"We have tried to arrange them in such a way that photos are matching with the months. For example Golden Temple is shown in April as Baiskahi, popular festival of Punjab, is celebrated in the month," Dewan said. "January has a picture of Lakshadweep beach as people prefer to go to a beach during this time while second picture of the month is of Himachal which shows snow."