ETW Staff – Mumbai
World Travel Market (WTM) London 2015 has announced that India Tourism will be the sponsor of its WTM Buyers’ Club as it looks to promote India to the global travel industry as a safe and year-round luxury destination. In 2014, 7.7 million tourists visited India, a growth of more than 10 per cent from just under seven million (6.97m) in 2013. In the first six months of 2015, the country welcomed 3.85 million tourists, up 3.4 per cent on the same six months in 2014.
Dr Lalit Panwar, ex-secretary (tourism), Government of India said, “India is happy to be sponsoring the WTM Buyers’ Club for WTM London 2015. The objective of the ministry of tourism is to promote India as a year round luxury destination through its vibrant destinations and tourism products and to increase tourist traffic to the country. There is an ever-increasing amount of new and exciting products to educate the world’s leading buyers about. WTM London is an event where the Indian tourism stakeholders get to meet the world’s buyers and sign business agreements. The ministry of tourism and the Indian exhibitors are looking forward to a very successful WTM London 2015.”
India is looking to increase its tourism numbers further by enticing tour operators from global source markets to promote the country as a year round luxury destination. The key to India’s strategy is to focus on a variety of niche products including- rural, wellness, medical, adventure, golf, MICE and cruise tourism –to overcome the aspect of ‘seasonality’ by promoting India as a 365 days destination, and expanding out from its most popular period of October to March.
India’s most popular destinations are Delhi, Agra and Jaipur, popularly known as the Golden Triangle, Rajasthan, Goa, Kerala and Kashmir. However, a greater focus is being put on North East India – Assam, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura and Mizoram. Furthermore, India has an array of new products to promote to the world’s leading buyers at WTM London 2015; including the development of its cruise industry, which will see Royal Caribbean include Indian ports in its itineraries from October. Other leading global cruise companies operating from India include Oceania Cruises and AIDA Cruises. A string of luxury global hotel chains including Rotana, Meininger, Jumeirah and Six Senses are scheduled to open a number of hotels in the next two years, further enhancing India’s position as a luxury destination.
Simon Press, senior director, WTM London said, “WTM London 2015 will host more than 9,000 of the world’s most important buyers through the WTM Buyers’ Club. These buyers will sign deals worth more than £2.5 million with exhibitors. India is in prime position to promote its exciting range of tourism products to these buyers through its sponsorship of the WTM Buyers’ Club.”