Health and wellness industry to get boost from Karnataka government

BENGALURU: With health spas, cosmetic surgeries and detox regimens beckoning a greying population to Karnataka from across India and abroad, the health and wellness tourism industry is poised for a big leap. To encash on this growing trend, the government plans to offer tax and non-tax incentives to entrepreneurs wanting to set up health and wellness related units here.For the first time, the state has drawn up such a proposal in the soon-to-be-launched Karnataka tourism policy 2014-19.
Setting its sights on this emerging segment of tourism, which attracted over 1.3 million people to India in 2013 alone, Karnataka is keen to jump on the bandwagon. It wants to attract investments in new facilities and draw more medical tourists to the city for high-end and complicated procedures.
According to an internal report of the tourism department, Karnataka is seeing a sharp increase in the number of tourists and almost a 25% annual rise in the medical and wellness tourism. "It is increasing every year but compared to Kerala, the state is still lagging behind," said a senior official, hinting at the reason for announcing sops.
Another recent study also advocated that states can overcome the travel industry's reliance on seasonality and vagaries of a global economic climate by promoting health and wellness tourism. It fou8nd that Karnataka's established tourism infrastructure, with its capacity to support world-class hotel services and quality of medical services, offers the best platform for this tourism.
While many hotels in Karnataka offer spa packages, ton't attract long-stay visitors as they don't package accommodation and treatment together, the study found.
Ramesh Jadhav, a former tourism official, said, "The new incentives will go a long way in promoting wellness tourism. Foreign tourists arriving in the state for treatment will increase on account of the value for money they get."