Mumbai, Jan 20 (PTI) After strategic tie ups with eight state tourism departments across the country, leading aggregator of verified home stays Stayzilla today said it has signed an agreement with Agri Tourism Development Company (ATDC) to promote agri tourism home stays.

ATDC is a private organisation, which endorses agriculture tourism to achieve income, employment and economic stability in rural communities in India.

The organisation also helps to boost activities, services and amenities provided by farmers and people from rural areas to attract urban tourists to their area, thus, giving opportunity for urban people to get back to the roots.

With this MoU, Stayzilla takes a leap into the domain of rural tourism and re-enforcing its unique experiential proposition.

Stayzilla will collaborate with ATDC to promote agri tourism by empowering the farmers to market their home stays.

Under the MoU, more than 300 agri tourism stays will be listed on Stayzilla to provide an enhanced experiential stays for the tourists where they can stay with the local people in the rural areas.

It will also provide joint workshops by Stayzilla and ATDC, in which the farmers will be trained on travel technology and agri-tourism.

"India is largely an agrarian economy and most of the festivals and culture are centred at agriculture. The real taste of Indian culture lies in the villages. With this tie-up we become the strongest proponent of experiential tourism in India. Our associations with different state governments also share the same vision towards rural tourism. We are looking forward to many such associations in 2017," Stayzilla Vice President, Marketplace, Ankit Rastogi said.

Bengaluru-based Stayzilla.com is a platform for verified home stays and alternate stays in the country and has more than 55,000 stay options across 4,500 towns in the country.

The platform caters to both homeowners and travellers looking for differentiated, unique stay experiences.

"The sole objective of ATDC is to promote agri tourism by all means possible and take up initiatives that works for promotion of our rural communities," ATDC Managing Director Pandurang Taware added. PTI SM ARS