Tourist safety is key to booming tourism in K'taka

If you love entertaining guests at home, first ensure that they feel safe and comfortable at your place. If they feel threatened, insecure, or uncomfortable due to actions on your part, rest assured that a word will go around, and they will think more than twice about revisiting you.

- Nirad Mudur

If you love entertaining guests at home, first ensure that they feel safe and comfortable at your place. If they feel threatened, insecure, or uncomfortable due to actions on your part, rest assured that a word will go around, and they will think more than twice about revisiting you. The phrase Atithi Devo Bhava gains significance from this simple fact: that your actions must make the guests feel safe and special—like gods. Only then will they look forward to visiting you again, and even suggest it to others.

The same principle works on a larger scale for tourism. We make the tourists—domestic and foreign—feel special, comfortable, and safe, and rest assured Karnataka tourism would grow with them spreading the word around among family and friends, besides themselves planning revisits.

However, the March 6 night horror in Koppal, in which two women—a local homestay owner and an Israeli tourist—were allegedly gangraped by three local miscreants, goes smack against that. They came to enjoy Hampi and Karnataka, riding on the state's tourism motto "One State, Many Worlds," but ended up with their worlds being shattered.