About 2.6 lakh people visited the state last year during the 10-day Hornbill Festival, which is touted as the ‘Festival of Festivals’ by Nagaland Tourism. This year the department expects better visitor turn out.
As Nagaland Tourism is all set to host the 26th edition of the Hornbill Festival at Kisama Heritage Village from today, December 1, the government is expecting to breach the previous records in visitor numbers this year.
According to Nchumberno Lotha, Secretary – Tourism, Nagaland, around 2.6 lakh people visited the state during the 10-day long festival last year, and they are hoping to surpass that this year.
Touted as the ‘Festival of Festivals’, the annual Horbill Festival has become one of the big draw events of the North East India identified closely with the culture and heritage of the region. The festival is the culmination of many big and small hornbills celebrated by 18 different tribes of Nagaland. The festival time is also considered the best time to visit the region to experience the rich and vivid tribal culture of the region.
While paucity of accommodation facilities and traffic management continue to pose challenges for the organisers, Lotha said that there had been improvements on both fronts in recent years. Traffic management was excellent last year due to coordinated efforts, and on the accommodation front, he felt they would be able to manage the show better this time around. The senior bureaucrat of the state said this in an interaction with TravelBiz Monitor on the sidelines of the International Tourism Mart (ITM) 2025 held in Sikkim’s capital, Gangtok, recently.
A 50-room hotel by Shillong-based Polo Towers Hotels is slated to start operations in Kohima before the festival, he said. This will ease the pressure on accommodation to some extent. The property is the first PPP hotel project opening in the capital city.
Talking about new hotel developments, Lotha said that another 3-star hotel is under construction currently in Kohima under the Smart City project.
“Around 3,000 foreign visitors visited the state during the hornbill festival last year,” Lotha said. With reports of Central Home Ministry relaxing the PAP (Protected Area Permit) restrictions for foreign visitors during the Hornbill festival, the number of foreign visitors is expected to go up this year.
In the absence of mainstream hotels, the government is relying on homestays in a big way to accommodate guests visiting the state during the Horbill. Lotha said that there is a dedicated push to encourage people to start homestays in the state.
He said that the Central Tourism Ministry has given instructions to the state to identify 100 villages to promote homestays in the state.
“We are hopeful of identifying at least 30 villages this year itself,” Lotha informed.
He said that Nagaland Tourism has submitted Dzukou Valley eco-tourism project for central assistance under the iconic destination development scheme under challenge mode and hopeful of getting the project approval soon.
