Welcome Boost for Kerala Home Stay Owners

Source : ET

The Kerala Tourism department is brining a policy to exempt home stay owners from commercial taxes and tariffs soon. As per Mr. P Bala Kiran , The Director –Tourism this is a step taken to bring Home stay and service villas into the mainstream and encourage the home stay owners to become part of the classified home stay system of the state tourism . Mr. Kiran declared the same while addressing a virtual conference organized by Kerala HATS.

Kerala which had about 1,500 classified home stays once currently has less than 500 home stays under the tourism department. Earlier home stay owners used to avoid to enlist for classification as they had to end up paying more in terms of property tax, water tax, pollution control board approval etc But the new decision of the Government will encourage people to classify under the system.

The stake holding departments like tourism and the local self government have already agreed on the new system and necessary order are expected to be announced soon. KeralaHATS also recommended the government to revise the ‘Grihasthali’ heritage protection scheme of the government to encourage owners of ancestral houses to convert old houses which portrays Kerala’s old architecture into homestays. The Tourism Department offers a maximum of INR 5 lakh for renovation and maintenance of such assets with 25% subsidy. The association of homestay owners asked for upward revision of the government subsidy to encourage people to protect the heritage of Kerala.