ETW STAFF – Mumbai
India Tourism has launched two new campaigns : an international campaign called ‘Find What You Seek’ and a domestic campaign called ‘Go Beyond’. These campaigns where launched at the recently concluded World Travel Market-2012, which was held at London. The union Tourism minister K Chiranjeevi who attended WTM- 2012 told media persons that the launch of these campaigns reflects an important paradigm shift in our strategy to promote India within the country and abroad. The ‘Go Beyond’ campaign focuses on promoting lesser known destinations to domestic as well as international tourists.
He said, “Till now, we had been promoting India internationally from the point of view of the destinations. The Incredible India campaigns which we launched in 2002 has been extremely successful. In our ‘Take II’ of the Incredible India campaign, we are going to focus on the consumer.” The tourism minister said the second phase of Incredible India campaign is ‘Find What You Seek’. He said, “Tourists from the world over can find the destination or product of their desire in India, be it heritage sites, forts, beaches, backwaters, lakes, mountains, adventure, wildlife, culture, festivals, medical, wellness, MICE, religion or shopping. India offers something for everyone and that is why we proudly say that India is an incredible destination with a range of products as found nowhere else. It is truly in India, you will find what you are seeking.”
Referring to WTM he said this year ministry of Tourism participated in WTM by taking a space that was about 15 per cent higher than last year’s space. Private stakeholders from India had taken space of a similar size. This year, there were over 110 Indian participants from the trade, state governments and union territory administrations in WTM for doing serious business. Chiranjeevi added that India would be hosting the next meeting of the UNWTO Regional Commission for South Asia and Far East & Pacific in April – May next year in Hyderabad. India is currently the chairperson of the UNWTO regional commission for South Asia.
He said, “My efforts would be to make tourism as India’s main economic and political agenda taking all state governments, union territory administrations and stakeholders on board and establish India as round the year destination. Our focus would be to further develop and promote niche products like rural tourism, wellness and medical tourism, cruise tourism, adventure and wildlife tourism, film tourism, sports tourism and MICE tourism.”
