Shifting into high gears with new tourism policies, diverse range of sustainable tourism products and brand new promotion strategies, Department of Tourism, Government of Kerala organised a ‘Partnership Meet’ at The Lalit Hotel, New Delhi on March 16, 2018. The meet was organised to showcase Kerala’s immense potential as an adventure, medical, holistic, wedding, pilgrim and cultural tourist destination and to liaison with domestic tour operators and destination management fraternity.
Addressing the media and travel fraternity, Muraleedharan P, tourist information officer, Department of Tourism, Government of Kerala, elaborated the inbound and outbound tourism statistics. He said, “Kerala has already registered a remarkable increase in international and domestic tourist arrivals during the year 2017. The domestic tourist arrivals (DTAs) increased to 1,46,73,520 in 2017 from 1,31,72,535 in 2016 registering an increase of 11.39 percent. Similarly, Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) for the year 2016 was 10,38,419 which increased to 10,91,870 in 2017 by 5.15 percent. Also, revenue generation from inbound tourist activities which was Rs 29,658 crores in 2016, swelled to Rs 33,383 crores increasing by 11.15 percent. The foreign exchange earnings for the year 2016 were Rs 7749 crores which increased to Rs 8832 crores in 2017 by 12 percent.”
Muraleedharan also informed about the newly introduced tourism promotion strategies and products. “For art aficionados, the state will endorse lanes of Fort Kochi and a pilgrimage to the Kochi Muziris Biennale, which has helped to established Kochi as the art capital of India. For those into history, projects like Muziris Heritage, where the remains of Muziris ancient trade port and Spice Route, a project backed up by UNESCO, where around 30 countries shared their cultural legacies with Kerala around 2000 year agos have been initiated, which will help to revive ancient trade culture and re-establish Kerala’s maritime associations with the countries on the Spice Route,” informed Muraleedharan. “Responsible Tourism, through which we take care of local communities, is our main mission while promoting Kerala as a tourism brand and keeping this in mind, the government has set a target to achieve 100 percent FTAs and 50 percent DTAs in the coming five years. Keeping this objective in mind, a tourism regulatory authority has also been formed. Also, a Green Carpet agenda of 10 points has been formulated which will act as a code of conduct for tourist places,” Muraleedharan further added.
Speaking exclusively to Express TravelWorld, Muraleedharan also informed about the niche areas of promotion that the government is looking into and discussed future strategies of Kerala Tourism department. He said, “The niche area that we are looking to promote this year under Kerala’s Responsible Tourism Mission, which has already been started in all 14 districts in Kerala, is Eco- Adventure tourism, wherein we will promote Kerala’s natural heritage combined with adventure tour activities for tourists of all age groups in places like Munnar and Wayanad. Also, according to the taste of MICE segment, we are planning to provide them with houseboats accommodations for organising meetings and conferences under Backwaters tourism promotion at places like Alleppey, Kottayam and Kumarakom. Presently, we have around 70,000 hotels rooms that are equipped with necessary itineraries to serve the tourists and we have liaisoned with tour operators and their associations in cities like New Delhi and encouraged them to offer exclusive Kerala tour packages to their customers.”
Kerala’s tourism department is also organising the 10th edition of ‘Kerala Travel Mart’ (KTM) to draw the attention of private tour operators and associations towards the natural heritage that Kerala posses and carry forward this message to the world. The KTM event will be organised from September 27, 2018, for four days.
During the course of the event, a short film by Kerala Blog Express on ’13 things to do in Kerala’ was also screened. Kerala Blog Express is a social media outreach that will unify international and domestic travel bloggers and will start on March 18, 2018. Various cultural and traditional dances of Kerala like Mohiniattam, Kathakali and martial artforms were showcased towards the end of the event.
By Shivasheesh Srivastava