Straight answers

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal"><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="" font-style:="" italic="">Suresh Shetty</span><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">, Minister of State for Tourism, On the poor performance of the Deccan Odyssey</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Hasn''t the Deccan Odyssey failed to interest passengers?</span><br /><br />That''s not true. This tourism train has a seven-day tour and the first season for this luxury train began last August. It had 170 passengers and we made a revenue of about Rs 1.17 crore. Now, we have also introduced a three-day tour. We are looking at tourism from a wider angle. We want to promote not just the Deccan Odyssey, but also market Mahrashtra as a tourist destination.<br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">So obviously the train is a failure?</span><br /><br />It''s not. It takes time for any project to take off. The Palace-on-Wheels took about three years to become a success. In fact, the Deccan Odyssey has done well in the first year. What we need is good marketing. We are trying to tie up with Air India (AI) and Indian Airlines (IA) to market it. We want to show a short film on Deccan Odyssey on AI flights so foreign tourists will be aware about the train. We are also trying to upgrade our publicity campaign abroad. <br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Was the Deccan Odyssey project too ambitious?</span><br /><br />Well, we have already started the train so we can''t leave it half-way. We will meet with the railway ministry to chalk out different journey packages.<br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Instead of focussing just on the train, don''t you think the spotlight should have been on the tourist spots in the state? </span><br /><br />We are in the process of evaluating all the historic sites under the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC). We will review the MTDC properties and make them more tourist-friendly. We don''t want the babu culture in this ministry. We want to make it a service industry.<br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Meanwhile, the train is rusting in the shed...</span><br /><br />We will have a meeting with the railway authorities on the same as we want to make the train operational through the year. We are working out a maintenance and operational time frame. <br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">manish.pachouly@timesgroup.com</span></div> </div>