On a Saturday evening, a day ahead of the Gauri-Ganesha festival, sitting in a small dingy room in Mandi Mohalla, one of many handicraft clusters in Mysore, 30-year-old Krishnamurthy Karthik is busy carving an intricate wooden artwork that he hopes will fetch him at least Rs 5,000! Five kilometres away, with handloom warping machines making a din, workers at the state-owned silk weaving factory are busy making silk sarees.Two kilometres further, a receptionist of a prime hotel in the centre of the city is busy on the phone locking room reservations for prospective guests.
Nada Habba, the state festival of Karnataka, is a month and half away (October 2), and this year’s festivities include a couple of firsts like ‘Heli-tourism’ and the city’s maiden 43-day ‘Mysore Shopping Festival’, which will be much on the lines of the highly successful Dubai Shopping Festival.The festival is expected to give a big boost to the tourism, handloom, handicraft and hospitality sectors.
With a rich history of more than 400 years, Mysore celebrates Dasara with glittering grandeur at the Mysore Palace every year. The festival attracts close to 6 lakh tourists (1/5th of the entire year’s number) from across the world during September and October, and the State spends close to Rs 12 crore for the Dasara festivities.This year’s Dasara is likely to be bigger than that of last year. Drought marred the celebrations in 2015 with the state government deciding to cut short the festivities.
In 2015, tourist footfall recorded (Tourism Department data) during the months of September and October across major tourist locations in Mysore-including Mysore palace, Chamundi hills, Talakadu, Nagarahole Wildlife Sanctuary among others was close to 20 lakh.The footfall recorded throughout the year has steadily increased over the last three years. It was 1.9 crore in 2015 compared to 1.45 crore in 2014 and 1.32 crore in 2013, according to the Tourism Department.
The 43-day ‘Mysore Shopping Festival’, being organised by travel organisations in association with the Mysore Chamber of Commerce and Industry, aims to promote retail trade and attract lakhs of tourists. Close to 1,000 establishments spread across the city are expected to participate with special discounts and offers to the customers.Sandalwood products, rosewood products and Channapattana lacquerware toys are the preferred choice of foreign tourists. Domestic tourists prefer wooden mantapas, wall arts and paintings.Most handicraft units record higher sales during the season. The items are sold from various Cauvery emporiums, exhibitions and at melas.
From procuring the wood to seasoning it to cutting, pruning and carving the items, every process is done in the Mysore-Mandya region, giving it a unique geographical importance.”This enhances the sale value of the products,” said Karthik. “The workers at my unit use white plastic material for inlay work instead of ivory which is banned. But it still attracts customers as it retains the charm.” After the death of his father, Karthik has been carrying on the traditional family business of handicrafts along with his two younger brothers. He generally expects 3-4 times the turnover during Dasara months (September/October) compared to other months of the year.“Dasara is special for us. We get regular customers for our products, but we always keep ready a few artworks and handicrafts in advance for tourists arriving during the Dasara months,” said Karthik.
Meanwhile, to boost handloom sales, the silk weaving factory of the Karnataka Silk Industries Corporation Limited (KSIC), will be organising exhibition-cum-sale of ‘Mysore Silk’ products during the season with discounts up to 30% on various products.KSIC obtained the Geographical Indication registration trademark for ‘Mysore Silk’ under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999. 
The sarees carry KSICs embroidered code number and hologram, as an indication of their authenticity. The price of KSIC Mysore silk sarees range from Rs 12,000 to Rs 2.5 lakh each.“Usually, we achieve a revenue target of Rs 18 to Rs 20 crore per month across the state. But during Dasara, sales will be 1.5-2 times that figure. We also bring in more designs during the season, as compared to other months, to boost sales,” said a KSIC manager who prefers to remain anonymous.
As part of its efforts to boost adventure tourism, the Mysore district administration will this year organise ‘Heli-tourism’. Offering tourists an aerial view of the city at a subsidised rate.“People have seen Mysore from the ground. This time, we want to create a unique experience for tourists by offering a helicopter ride that will give them an aerial view of the mansions and mountains around the city. All safety aspects will be taken into consideration. A preliminary meeting with the city police has already been held,” deputy commissioner of Mysore district D Randeep told this reporter. The administration will tie-up with taxi aggregators like Uber and offer special rides and packages for people coming in from Bengaluru. “We will do a venue-to-venue, event-to-event recce. Dasara will be celebrated on a much larger scale than last year’s,” Randeep said. 
That said, not everything is as smooth as it looks. The hospitality industry is posed with a grim situation on the ground. There aren’t enough tourist homes/lodges to accommodate tourists. This has created a huge demand-supply gap and hotel tariffs have shot up.The Mysuru City Hotel Owners’ Association puts the number of hotels in the city at 400 with 8,000 rooms which can accommodate roughly 20,000 people. Tariffs range from Rs 500 to Rs 10, 000 per room per night.“To address the shortage (of lodging), we are trying to ease the process by creating additional lodging facilities in cities which are close to Mysore such as Srirangapatna, Channapattana and Mandya with reasonably good connectivity.”
Deputy Commissioner Randeep said there was no pressure on the government to give clearances to more hotels and that it will consider all aspects, like green belt regulations, type of land-use that is permitted as per the comprehensive development plan (CDP) and city corporation norms before giving clearance to new hotels.Yet another concern for the city administration is that of prostitutes invading the city in droves during Dasara.“There is no statistics to substantiate the rise in prostitution. It is a concern though and I have instructed officials to control it. We want to brand Mysuru not just as a clean and healthy city, but also as a safe and tourist-friendly destination for tourists from around the world,” Randeep said.
(This article was published in the recent issue of Karnataka Today Magazine)
