'Special discounts, ranging from 10 to 15 percent, will be offered by CITCO hotels and restaurants that also include the five-star hotel Mountview,' he added.

The tourism industry in Chandigarh is already booming, despite the global recession, and officials here are expecting the arrival of nearly one million tourists here in 2009.

'Chandigarh is experiencing an increased rush of tourists with the passing of every month and this year we are expecting to cross the mark of one million,' Vinod Kalia, deputy director, tourism department, told IANS.

'From January to July this year, around 542,000 tourists including 20,000 foreign tourists have visited the city, which is more than the number of tourists who came here in the corresponding period last year,' he said.

The tourism figures of the last few years shows a clear rise in tourist inflow to the city, considered a gateway to Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana and Punjab.

According to tourism officials here, 960,912 tourists visited the centrally administered city, which is the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, in 2008. Of these, 32,074 were foreigners.

In 2005, nearly 638,000 tourists visited the city, 730,000 in 2006 and 954,726 in 2007.

The city, with its wide, clean roads and large gardens, was designed by legendary French architect Le Corbusier in the 1950s. It boasts of many acclaimed tourist destinations like Sukhna Lake, Rock Garden, Rose Garden and the Museum and Art Gallery.

Last year on World Tourism Day, the administration here had launched tourism police and special city cards for tourists, but these schemes could not be implemented properly.