SHILLONG, Feb 17: Meghalaya state capital Shillong is poised to become a major music hub, tourism minister Paul Lyngdoh said on Monday even as he added with more than Rs 4000 crore investments being announced, the government is looking forward to major change happening in the tourism sector within the next two years.
This statement came days after the successful hosting of the Ed Sheeran concert and Mr Big concert in Shillong
Speaking to media persons, Lyngdoh said, “The Ed Sheeran concert has taken our music industry and Meghalaya’s concert economy to the next level. As you know he (Ed Sheeran) is ranked number two in the world today and the fact that he openly acknowledges that this was the biggest and the best ever crowd that he has been attending in India goes to show that Shillong has in its natural DNA all the making of a great music city.”
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“We are very steadily improving the ecosystem across the state. We are trying to improve the road connectivity for instance, we are trying to improve the availability of home stays and such facilities and wherever we have been able to attract musicians so far, the first preference for all these artists is that there should be adequate maintained accommodation facilities,”he added.
Lyngdoh said in fact Meghalaya started the trend way back in 2004, much before the term concert economy was coined.
“So therefore, we have gone far ahead and as you can see from the various organizers of these shows in their interaction, they have openly said that today everybody would like Shillong to figure in their itinerary, so it is major step forward for Meghalaya tourism as a whole and music industry in particular.”
He said that roughly 30000-35000 attended the Ed Sheeran concert.
The minister further added, “We have not got those figures yet, but I can assure you that all hoteliers and home stay owners are very happy because for the first time they could see the tourists and visitors visiting even in the lean season which is January and February.”
Lyngdoh said, “We have made a sample surveys where we found out that for example for Ed Sheeran for instance we had Ed Sheeran and day later we had Mr Big, so quite a good number of tourist stay back and they travelled and visited Sohra, Dawki and Umiam areas and with more than Rs 4000 crores been announced as investment in the tourism sector, we look forward to major change happening within the next two years.”
“We will now concentrate on improving our infrastructure as you can see the ropeway project has taken up, major circuit are also been linked in the sense that instead of just one village we have five tourist centres being linked and visitors will be encouraged to visit each of those circuits and that apart we will also enlarged the tourism annual map which we have announced every year to now include more areas including new found locations,” he added. (NNN)
