Shimla: Chief Minister Thakur Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu today took a decisive step toward streamlining Himachal Pradesh’s tourism sector by launching the dedicated home stay registration portal, http://homestay.hp.gov.in designed to simplify the administrative process. The new platform allows operators to complete their registration online, ensuring a user-friendly experience from the comfort of their homes.
The Chief Minister emphasized that the state government was committed to facilitate hotel owners and home stay operators to ensure that their businesses remain unhindered by bureaucratic hurdles. In a significant move to support the hospitality industry, the Chief Minister issued clear directives that ‘renewal of registration’ of home stays must not be stalled under the pretext of Fire No Objection Certificates (NOC). He instructed the Tourism Department to grant provisional registrations to such establishments, ensuring that business operations and maintenance can proceed without harassment or unnecessary obstruction.
Highlighting the vast potential of the state’s tourism landscape, Thakur Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu noted that the Home Stay Scheme is a cornerstone of the government’s strategy to foster self-employment. The initiative aims to promote rural tourism and draw visitors to the state’s untouched, lesser-known destinations. To maximize these opportunities, the government has expanded the scheme’s scope to include urban areas allowing for the registration of home stays with a capacity of up to six rooms.
The Chief Minister underscored that home stays offer a unique value proposition, providing tourists with an authentic “homely” experience through traditional village architecture and local cuisine. He remarked that serving traditional dishes not only enriches the tourist experience particularly for foreign visitors but also significantly boosts the income of local homeowners.
To further incentivize the sector, the Chief Minister highlighted the introduction of an interest subsidy scheme designed to assist people in setting up expanding or upgrading tourism units. Under this initiative, the state provides interest subsidies of three percent in urban areas, four percent in rural areas and five percent in tribal regions on term loans.
Himachal Pradesh Tourism Development Board Vice Chairman R.S. Bali virtually joined the occasion, while the Principal Adviser (Media) to the Chief Minister, Naresh Chauhan, Principal Secretary Devesh Kumar and Director of Tourism Department Vivek Bhatia were present in Shimla.
