India, a great tourism brand.Are we doing justice in marketing it ?

What ails Indian tourism boards in marketing their destinations?

One of the major drawbacks the states are facing to market tourism abroad is that we do not project India as one face. Since culturally India is divided into several states and each state is eying for their share of revenues and the concerted effort is absent. Even when we participate in some of the world tourism fairs which is held in London and Germany every year one finds an India Pavilion promoting Incredible India and concurrently we notice other states taking their own space in the fairs and making noise. Here again the might of some of the state tourism board in terms of presence and visibility is low as they don’t have deep pockets to shell out money. Invariably year after year we witness only Kerala dominating this space with massive stall display and impressive presentation. This major marketing imbalance also sends some wrong signals to visitors and trade about India and its tourism potential. This is one key issue the central government needs to sort it out and come with some cutting edge strategy so that only one brand is being promoted. On that point efforts have been made by launching the Incredible India campaign. But one is not sure how much this has helped to woo tourist to India.

Owning a strong brand property:Countries like Australia, Singapore, China, Malaysia France, UK, Spain, Italy, Dubai and USA has not fragmented their destinations and marketed it. Interestingly most of these countries market their destinations aggressively with one powerful marketing idea. If you take a country like Singapore where shopping has been the big attraction apart from some few place of interest. But the country has owned shopping as their big brand property and has cleverly used that platform as an annual feature with the Great Singapore Sale which lasts close to 2 months with great razzmatazz ambience and festivity. The timing of this event only takes place during summer vacation to tap the huge Indian market. Once the Sale event gets over they plan the Christmas and New Year event which attracts lot of tourists from the neighboring countries. Look at Dubai they have also used shopping as the great attraction with sweepstakes and raffles to woo tourist. Now watch out what Honkong as done, they have built a Disneyland there to entice tourist so each one of this country have created exciting marketing properties to get tourist. You now need not go all the way to US to see Disneyland. All of us know Hong Kong never owned any great attraction to bring in tourist but introducing Disneyland has made the country popular in a tourists mind.

Set up tourism boards for strong marketing:
Singapore has got full fledged tourism board in Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi to market their country. The board runs several joint promotional campaigns with travel operators and participates in local tourism fairs and exhibition to market their country aggressively. Even the saliency of their brand is high as they are strongly present in high reach magazines and TV channels. This is further supplemented by their national carrier Singapore Airlines who run attractive travel packages to visit Singapore. The airlines have also increased their band width by flying from most of important metros in India. Even other counties like Australia and Malaysia has set up their boards for easy access of knowledge and information of their countries.
We are lagging far behind on this front. Most of our marketing efforts to promote tourism in India are done through our foreign offices and embassies. One really does not have any idea the strength of our marketing force at these offices from the tourism point of view. If budgets are the issue to set up tourism board then we must look at strong marketing tie ups with local travel operators or have strong exchange program to promote India.

What was Maharashtra’s strategy to raise the bar?The repositioning and re branding exercise using the Maharashtra Unlimited campaign increased the awareness of Maharashtra but it was still not seen as a happening destination amongst international tourist. The state also became suddenly ambitious to double the tourist traffic in the global space. Since the state did not own one unique property like other states the challenge to take it to the next level was a big one. The objective was to ensure foreign tourist not to use Mumbai as a transit point. The state also realized some pedestal or strong platform was required to create a hook to pull the tourist .This gave birth to the idea of launching a Luxury train which was the best and most viable option available as the train could travel across Maharasthra touching all destinations in royal style. Branding the train as Deccan Odyssey with strong communication campaign helped in getting some entry in the foreign markets. The online booking and marketing of the train through travel agents in the international markets to some extent helped to push Maharastra as the preferred destination. Today Deccan Odyssey is the jewel of Maharashtra. Condensate traveler one of the reputed international travel magazine has seeded Deccan Odyssey amongst the top luxury trains in the world according to the survey conducted by them.
The way forward:
The launch of the luxury train has definitely catapulted Maharashtra in the world tourism map. The success of this has already prompted Kerala and Karnataka to introduce Luxury trains in their respective states. The state has still got to do a lot to match the world class destination. While airports are modernized and infrastructure is looked at closely the passion to promote the state as hot tourist spots should not get dried fast.
While print campaigns and participating in travel exhibition will generate awareness but it is important we must use our foreign offices and diplomats to promote the state. Credibility has to be built among travel operators and foreign tourists about the state. Strong PR strategy needs to be evolved through fam tours and diplomatic relations to make the state as one of the most attractive tourist place.
The states should look at tourism also as an industry that will generate employment and earn good foreign exchange revenue. The tourist arrival has really shot up in last few years. Today it is close to 6 million but we are way behind to even Singapore who attract close to 10 million each year. So where is the lacuna? Only continuous introspection, aggressive and friendly policies from the government on the tourism front will help us in increasing tourist arrivals.