Long drives on the highways in Tamil Nadu won’t be tedious anymore with the Tourism Department planning to set up high standard wayside facilities for travellers.
The high-tech facilities will come up at intervals of 50 km on major highways.
The centres will have restaurants, bookshops, medical shops, ATMs, handicrafts/handloom shops, toilets, automobile service centres and internet cafes, among others, Minister for Tourism, S P Shanmuganathan said.
Private and corporate investors would be encouraged to take up the projects, the minister said at a conference of tourism ministers in New Delhi on Thursday.
The wayside facilities would have uniformity in architecture, reflecting the ethnicity of the state, he added.
The minister said tourist arrivals to Tamil Nadu has shown a huge increase. The year 2012 registered an unprecedented growth of 34 per cent.
The Vision 2023 document released by Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa projects arrival of 1.5 crore foreign tourists and investment of Rs 10,000 crore in the sector.