To be jointly operated by the custodian of ports, Gujarat Maritime Board and the Tourism Corporation of Gujarat, the hovercraft will ferry tourists from Porbandar to the pristine Madhavpur beach, the temple town of Dwarka and historic port town of Kutch Mandvi. "With an expenditure of Rs 16 crore, we propose to buy two hovercraft with a carrying capacity of 50 and 31 passengers respectively. We will rent them to corporates for their private parties and get-togethers to recover the investment while serving tourists simultaneously," said GMB's chief nautical officer Captain SC Mathur. Not to be left behind, even land-locked states including Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar are adapting to the trend. Be it rivers, lakes or even dams, the states are offering corporates space on waterbodies for those power-packed meetings.

Senior manager (adventure tours and travels) of Assam Tourism Development, Nirenchandra Deka said that ever since the government introduced the 70-seater Jalpari a decade ago, there have been substantial number of players who took the cue and began offering the Brahmaputra River Cruise. "However, of late, there has been a substantial rise in the number of takers from the corporate world which makes the service more lucrative for operators," he said.

In central India, while Narmada Queen and Lake Princess have been ferrying tourists and corporates in the Bargi Dam near Jabalpur and the Upper Lake of Bhopal, the Madhya Pradesh State Tourism Development (MPSTDCL) launched a 52-seater Godwana Queen in the Narmada last week. The 90-km-long Narmada River Cruise will take passengers from Jabalpur to Mandla in six hours, said advisor of MPSTDCL (adventure and eco-tourism) Rajendra Nigam.

"At Rs 1,500 per head, a ride on the cruise liner is a good deal for the corporates who want to give their executives an experience of a lifetime. Our three cruise liners cost us nearly Rs 270 lakh and renting it to the high-end clients makes commercial sense," he said.

Though still in its nascent stages, the Jharkhand government has initiated an exercise to make optimal use of its water bodies for commercial gains. Managing director of Jharkhand Tourism Development, Dipak Singh, told ET, "While we have introduced boating facilities in Jamshedpur, eventually, we will offer cruise liners to cash in on the trend."