COVID-19: Poor tourist footfall at Jaipur monuments despite free entry

Jaipur: It’s been three weeks since the famous monuments of Jaipur including Amer Fort, Hawa Mahal, Nahargarh and Albert Hall were thrown open for tourists.

The Rajasthan archaeological department offered free entry to attract visitors; however, coronavirus scare kept tourists away from these tourist destinations. Only 50-100 tourists visited Amer Fort on a daily basis during the first two weeks when the entry was free. In the third week, there was a 50% discount on the entry fee, but the footfall further decreased further compared to the first two weeks. On June 15, only one person bought the entry ticket for Amber Fort.

The eight monuments of Jaipur – Amer Fort, Jantar Mantar, Hawa Mahal, Albert Hall, Nahargarh, Sisodia Bag, Vidhyadhar Bagh and Isarlaat – are very famous among tourists. Only 3533 tourists visited these eight monuments in the past three weeks.

Amer Fort tourist footfall:

• June 15 – 1
• June 16 – 9
• June 17 – 26
• June 18 – 28
• June 19 – 21
• June 20 – 27

 The situation is worse at monuments in other cities including Jodhpur and Udaipur. Nearly 6000 tourists visited monuments in 24 cities of Rajasthan in the last three weeks.

The total number of COVID-29 cases are about to cross 15,000 in Rajasthan. On Sunday, 393 cases were reported across the state. Of them, 60 were reported in Jaipur alone. The total number of cases has gone up to 14930. As many as 12 people died, taking the death toll to 349.