Kahini Chakraborty – Mumbai
With an aim to continue promoting itself as a safe standalone tourism destination, Jordan Tourism Board has aggressive promotional plans for the India market. The tourism board has turned its focus on south Indian states (Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu) and seven northeastern states of India for promoting the Holy Land tourism offering for the christian community. The board is also working on two niche tourism offering projects – wellness and food and wine, which should materialise by the third quarter of 2015. Speaking to Express TravelWorld, Ashit Taneja, country manager, Jordan Tourism Board said, “We are positioning Jordan as a standalone destination and developing packages offering five-six nights length of stay in the destination. Our target traveller segment includes: leisure, FITs, honeymooners, MICE, religious, wellness, families. And hence we are offering various products in destinations- Ammam, Petra, Dead Sea, Wadi Rum, Aqaba, and Holy Land. Apart from the regular products the board is developing newer tourism offerings. In 2013, the destination received 50,000 Indian travellers and 2014 also proved to be a good year for us in terms of growth in tourist numbers. To further boost these numbers, we are also looking at possibilities to tap producers for Bollywood tourism.”
Looking at having a 360 degree presence, the board is working on its B2B and B2C promotional activities. Apart from the metro cities, the tourism board is also targeting the Tier II western and northern cities- Ahmedabad, Pune, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Jaipur, Ludhiana and Amritsar. The tourism board launched its online destination programme in 2013, and now has 650 online Jordan specialist travel agents. It is also keen to organise a four-city workshop, seminars in 2015. The board also launched its official food website to cater to the growing food community and specialised gourmet niche within the travel and tourism industry. To cater to the MICE segment, Taneja said, “We have state-of-the-art infrastructure with international hospitality offerings to cater to the MICE segment. We have the biggest convention centre- King Hussein Bin Talal Convention Centre which is managed by Hilton. The centre has a capacity to cater to 5000 persons in theatre style seating. India is a huge potential market for us. And we are optimistic about tourist numbers increasing year-on-year for Jordan from the India market.”