ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) has spent around Rs4 million in a year for the repair and maintenance of its different motels and facilities. The government desires to ensure reasonable facilities to boost tourism, Listing the steps, they said that Corporation’s restaurant at Daman-e Koh in Islamabad had been made operational again, and now PTDC was running the restaurant.
They further said that Pakistan Tourism Friends Club (PTFC) had also been launched to facilitate domestic and international tourists and to provide them better facilities while an agreement was also signed between PTDC and the University of Management and Technology (UMT) Lahore for publishing the publicity material, banners, websites, seminars, conferences and promotion of PTFC scheme.
In this connection, the sources said, UMT was providing support for the publications, club cards and annual advertisements on World Tourism Day.
They further informed that handicraft bazaars had been organised at main PTDC motels in Naran, Gilgit, Skardu and Ayubia in connection with Independence Day celebrations, and were an another step to achieve better results.
Besides that, they added, Rawalpindi-Naran-Rawalpindi Tourist Coach Service was operated regularly during every summer, and in order to publicize this activity, its opening ceremony is held every year in the first week of June and it continues the service till August 31.
The sources said for continuous promotion of PTDC facilities and tourist attractions through social media network, PTDC and its subsidiaries were managing their unique Facebook group and pages for every motel and transport services, to publicize their new and upcoming events, special discounted packages and new facilities etc which were being widely liked by international and domestic tourists.
PTDC has also launched a SMS service to market PTDC motels and tour packages which has received an overall good response from a number of families and student groups.
The other steps was an agreement signed between PTDC and Northern Areas Transport Corporation (NATCO) to promote tourism in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) under which NATCO was providing exclusive 20 percent discount to passengers/tourists referred by the corporation.
The sources said that in order to create awareness among youth about Pakistan’s tourism potential and general public, photographic exhibitions were also arranged on different occasions and attended by students with their families and general public.
PTDC also participated in 12 international tourism exhibitions/seminars in Germany, India, Turkey, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Colombia and China while the Corporation organized 18 domestic tourism events during the period. These included National Tourism Workshop, Awareness Seminars at different educational institutions, Spring Tourism Gala, Media Family Trips, Photographic Exhibitions, Wall Climbing Competition, World Tourism Day Seminars and Events.
