December 2022 turned out to be a happy month for hotels and resorts in Kochi as they saw an increase in number of foreign tourists, a first since the outbreak of Covid-19. Tourists from France, UK, Germany and US are now visiting the city.<\/p>\n
The central government on Monday made it mandatory even for passengers, who take transit flights to India from high-risk countries, to have a RT-PCR negative certificate, but hoteliers here are confident that it is unlikely to have an adverse impact on the local tourism immediately.<\/p>\n
According to hoteliers, bookings by foreigners has risen 20-30% since Covid. Foreigners prefer to visit Kerala during October-March while domestic tourists visit all round the year. Before Covid, of the total number of tourists coming to the state, 10% constituted foreign and 90% domestic. Now it is 6% foreign and 94% domestic tourists. The number of foreign tourists increased only in December last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"