When Shirui Lily outshines International Festival, Tourism needs to be boosted

Last Updated on February 17, 2023 by SPN Editor

The fourth edition of Shirui Lily Festival 2022 was a huge success. The five-day event in the tiny town of Ukhrul in Manipur is a success story for every local festival. This year, around 2.19 lakh tourists attended the Shirui Lily festival.

The organiser, Tourism Department of Manipur govt is on cloud nine. With a small investment of just 4.5 crores, the festival made a floating revenue of about Rs 14.36 crore. It is a box office if we talked of movies.

The local economy was boosted and sales of local products were seen during this edition of Shirui Lily Festival 2022. It was a record-breaking one lakh tourists on the last day of the Festival where UK-based metal rock band “Monuments” was performed.

Let us focus on more foreign and domestic tourists in the next edition. The reason being, the huge return of Investment which the organiser of Shirui Lily festival is boosting is mostly from the local tourist. The money collected is from the state only. The true meaning of boosting the state economy through tourism festivals will be when we have income flows from Foreign and domestic tourists.

The Hornbill Festival of Nagaland is regarded as the biggest festival in the Northeast. The Nagaland Festival is a mega International event with huge investments. The three-day-long Cherry blossom festival of Meghalaya hardly finds 50,000 footfalls. However, local festival like the Shirui Lily is beating them in terms of tourist footfalls.

In terms of tourist footfalls, Nagaland’s Hornbill Festival is around 2 lakh to 2.7 lakhs annually. The 10-day festival of Nagaland is unique in having more than 3000 foreign tourists and 55 thousand domestic.

Even though the total footfalls of the Manipur Sangai Festival need to be verified, some media highlighted that in 2018, foreign tourist footfalls were 3000, which increased to 9000 in the 2019 edition. The number grows to 12,000 in the 2020 edition.

Taking an example of this year’s Shirui Lily Festival, the Tourism Department of Manipur must target organising the Manipur Sangai Festival to attract more than 10-15 lakhs tourists with a special focus on foreign and domestic footfalls. The more number of foreign and domestic tourists, the more income for the State economy.

For this to achieve, uniqueness and local theme should be the main focus to attract foreign and domestic tourists. Let us start promoting the Unity among the people and beautiful cultures of Manipur.