Rituparna Chatterjee – Mumbai
As part of its 2014 marketing campaign, German National Tourist Office (GNTO) will focus on its two core themes – UNESCO World Heritage Sites and 25th year of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Germany has around 38 World Heritage Sites and will be promoting these sites along with celebrating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall to boost tourism. This marketing campaign in 2014 is expected to boost the number of Indian travellers visiting Germany from this year, which witnessed no growth in the number of Indian travellers. Speaking about this, Romit Theophilus, director, marketing and sales – India, GNTO said, “The arrivals this year has been at par with last year. We don’t have any growth or any negative growth as such. We expect to finish this year also with the same figures as last year, which is close to 550,000 overnights from India to Germany.”
The rupee devaluation and the current social and economic condition in India has led to the number being static, explained Theophilus, adding, “The change in the exchange rate has hit the incentive travellers the worst because they travel in volumes and where we had plans to do a lot of incentives in October and November, unfortunately most of them have fallen through because their budgets have risen by almost 30 per cent. However, we expect to bounce right back next year.”
Despite the current scenario, Germany hopes to increase the number of travellers from India with specific growth coming in from the incentive travel segment. “By 2020 we will have a lot more Indians travelling to Germany not only for business but also for leisure. We will see an increase in incentive travel as well and now we are seeing more and more people willing to see one country independently rather than visiting many many countries at a go. We have seen an increased focus from a lot of corporates now on Germany given the infrastructure of the country, convenient transportation, easy of arranging events. Hence, we see a lot more incentive travellers going from India to Germany whether it will be 500 people to up to10,000 people,” he concluded.
