20 February 2005	Sunday	10 Muharram 1426

ISLAMABAD, Feb 19: The Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) will construct its head office in Islamabad which will be named as "Aiwan-i-Siyahat" - tourism house - an official source said.

Established in 1970, the PTDC has still no head office and is housed in a rented building, which keeps on changing for certain reasons. Therefore, the source said, in a recent meeting of the PTDC, it was decided that in the near future the corporation would have its own head office.

In this regard, a proposal was worked out, which would soon be forwarded to the quarters concerned for approval. The tourism house will have facilities not only for the PTDC officials but also for tourists from where they would get information about country's tourist sites.

The meeting also approved a Rs5 million project for computerization of all the PTDC motels. The "reservation and networking" project will help the PTDC cope with the modern challenges of communication.

After inter-linking the motels, the source said, it would become easy for national as well as international tourists to get online booking. The online booking of motels and hotels is frequently used for reservation; however, the country is lacking in this regard, the source said in reply to a question.

Despite having some of the best tourist attractions in the world we have failed to develop adequate infrastructure, hence losing millions of rupees every year," the source said.