Experts gathered at the recently concluded SATTE India Conference delved deep on the subject ‘Promotional and marketing strategy – Approaches to adapt to changes in the marketplace,’. Moderated by Rajeev Nangia, COO, TRAC Representations, the panellists represented some of the most impressive names in travel promotion in the world such as Turkey and Malaysia, from among the top 10 tourist destinations in the world, and the ambitious Dubai spearheading its marketing and promotions to emerge as one of the top selling tourist destinations in the world today.
Ozgur Ayturk, Coordinator, India & Malaysia, Ministry of Culture & Tourism, Turkey; P Manoharan, Director, Tourism Malaysia and Carl Vaz, Chairman, Charson Advisory and Director, Dubai Tourism – India, represented the supplying side on the panel, whereas Karan Anand, Head – Relations, Cox & Kings represented the buying side of the discussion.
Putting the market and marketing in perspective, Nangia said that India has come a long way from a restrictive foreign exchange regime of yesteryears to a liberal environment where a good amount of money is at the travellers’ disposal today, one of the primary reasons why the number of Indians travelling abroad is growing rapidly.
This growth, as it came out during the course of discussion, is majorly being driven by the strategists who are making good use of the online space as things, in terms of marketing and promotion, gradually move away from traditional media and the traditional modes of promotion, to digital marketing, a thought also endorsed by Manoharan and Anand.
While making his point, Ayturk said that Turkey, currently ranked sixth with 36.8 million international tourist arrivals in 2014, is a relatively new destination in India, and therefore the South Asian country is an emerging market for with tremendous scope to grow. He informed that Indian tourist arrival numbers grew at a staggering 25 per cent last year, taking the total arrival figures to 120,000 Indian tourists visiting Turkey in 2014. “Apart from the regular promotional activities such as participating in major tourism fairs like SATTE, conducting roadshows and running media campaigns, we are also working on social media in innovative ways,” he informed.
He said that educating the private sector on both sides is important. “We want to educate the travel agents and tour operators in India and raise their awareness about the destination, while at the same time also educate the Turkish private sector about the needs and expectations of Indian travellers. As India is not one of our traditional source markets, we need to know more about the Indian travellers and their style and behaviour,” he said.
India’s growth story
Marketing and promotion is a key to the success of any entity. And with the ever changing travel marketplace and the technological advancements in this field, probably the most important question that rattles strategists is how to adapt to the changes in the space. National Tourist Offices (NTO) present in India have realised this and reoriented their strategies to tap the growing market.
NTOs such as Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey, Dubai, Monaco, USA and UK, among others, fine-tuned their strategies to make it more suitable to the Indian market. While the established destinations are now looking to penetrate tier-II cities in India, new entrants are very much focussed on major metros and in the process of studying the market potential of tier-II cities. Established destinations are also gradually spreading their wings to B2C segments, while staying focussed on B2B channels.
The moot point here is why NTOs are modifying their strategy. General opinion in the industry is that, with rapid changing technology, the mode of marketing and promotion needs to be changed to stay up to speed.
Traveller trends
South African Tourism, which recently concluded its four–city roadshow in India, is also looking at expanding its presence in the market. “Every year the roadshow continues to exceed our expectations and 2015 was no different. The popularity of South Africa as a preferred destination can be gauged through the warm response we receive from the Indian trade every year. This year, we saw a lot of South African suppliers making their debut in India through the roadshow and they have all received tremendous response and enquiries from all the cities. As a tourism board, we are glad to provide this interactive platform for enhancing destination knowledge and strengthening business opportunities between the Indian trade and South African products,” Hanneli Slabber, Country Manager, South African Tourism in India, said in a statement.
During the roadshow, South African Tourism saw the travel agent’s inclination to learn and sell luxury and adventure offerings of South Africa. Moving forward, the NTO will continue to explore newer markets in India to enhance relations with trade partners and to further educate them about South Africa’s varied tourism offerings, Slabber added.
The Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO), which announced VFS Global as their India representative at SATTE, is looking at India with great hopes and has prepared its marketing strategy accordingly. “We are looking forward to roll out our Macau promotional activities in India with our new representative VFS Global. India is one of the most important potential source markets for Macau and visitor arrivals continue to reflect the increasing interest of Indian visitors about our city. With the help of VFS Global, we want to reach out to more Indian travellers to show what they can experience in Macau,” Tse Heng Sai, Cecelia, Deputy Director, MGTO said.
In the first phase, MGTO promotions will focus on joining hands with travel trade partners to offer packages for key Indian metros – New Delhi and Mumbai, followed by Bengaluru, Chennai and Ahmedabad at a later stage.
Rather than the emphasise on just the destination or the generic feel of it, panellists at the SATTE India Conference agreed upon the need to highlight experiences, educate the consumers and trade, and develop the content accordingly. For the content, it is not just about the way it is conventionally written but through quality imagery so that it impacts the mindset and is retained in the mind for longer converting into better aspirational values.
“Going forward, content and imagery is going to play a major role in promoting any destination in the Indian market, along with detailing on what experiential products can be sought while travelling to a particular destination,” Nangia said.
Slipping into a new garb
Last year a new logo was designed to communicate Dubai’s ‘culture of success and its spirit of rising to any challenge’. The new logo features the word ‘Dubai’ written in both Arabic and Roman alphabets, representing the fact that the city is a fusion of cultures and nationalities.
Speaking about how Dubai is adapting to the changing marketplace, Vaz, said, “Dubai Tourism is now looking at content on Dubai as a destination in the digital space, be it talking about the food festival or sporting events such as the world’s richest horse racing event. We are also taking about key events that take place in the city such as the Emirates Literary Fare and Art Dubai. We want to look at the amount of content in the digital space, whether it is online or in other forms of social media, to increase the type and profile of the destination vis-à-vis events, festivals and key sporting activities that would go on through the year.”
Vaz also said that, with India being home to over 107 million active SIM cards that have access to the internet, there is this great opportunity that, when you are enhancing content for people searching and surfing, they also lead to people gaining knowledge via the internet on their smart phones. “It is not only about encouraging content or the quality of the content across the board on the internet, but also about encouraging content through applications, encouraging content on the destination through the social media and the digital space, because people are now using even their smart phones to research a destination in order to make a more informed choice for their holidays,” he said.
He opined that it is important to have B2B engagements but it is also equally important to provide the traveller today with quality information beyond the traditional destination facts. It is important for people to know about festivals, to know about events, whether they are musical events, sporting events, or whether it is leisure events, but it is also important to have this sort of information on the digital space, because people now make more informed choices on the different types of packages that they can have, he stated. “With some of our OTA partners we are actually having more content on the Dubai Food Festival in February.”
The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has also been reinventing its market strategy to tap the growing potential of the Indian outbound market. For 2015, TAT is promoting Thailand with the new global marketing and promotion campaign under the ‘2015 Discover Thainess’ slogan. The campaign focuses on seven fascinating features which epitomise Thailand’s unique character along with it’s glorious history and unique culture: Thai Food, Thai Arts, Thai Way of Life, Thai Wellness, Thai Festivity, Thai Wisdom and Thai Fun. The ‘2015 Discover Thainess’ campaign will also recommend a calendar of must-attend events and festivals.
TAT New Delhi Office keeps fine tuning its marketing strategy to increase their market share in India. At SATTE 2015, Thailand presented “Thainess” with demonstrations of the famous umbrella painting from San Kamphaeng district in Chiang Mai, as well as fruit and vegetable carving, which is a trademark of Thai cuisine. TAT also highlighted the Songkran Festival at SATTE. Runjuan Tongrut, Director, TAT New Delhi Office said, “TAT has been exhibiting at SATTE for many years. This year, the aim is to update the Indian travel trade with new offerings from Thailand as well as to introduce our unique “Thainess” identity to Indians.”
After appointing Gaganjeet Bhullar as a Brand Ambassador for a campaign to promote Thailand as one of the most sought after golfing destinations in 2013, TAT, this year, appointed Mary Kom as their Thai Boxing ambassador. The objective was to woo family and leisure segments from India.
New horizons
In October 2014, TAT New Delhi organised its roadshow in Jaipur and Bhubaneswar as part of it’s marketing plan to attract more first-time visitors. The addition of these cities demonstrates TAT’s increasing focus on India’s fast-growing tier II and III cities.
VisitBritain portrayed Britain as a favourite destination for Indian holiday-goers at SATTE 2015. Shivali Suri, Country Manager – India, VisitBritain said, “As per our latest data, VisitBritain is more than likely to surpass its ambition to attract 425,000 visits from India by 2016 – worth GBP 380 million in annual visitor spend. The Indian travellers visiting Britain last year were not deterred by the falling value of the Rupee against the Pound. 375,000 Indians visited the UK spending GBP 441 mn, only proving the potential of our market where, apart from the business traveller, more and more families are also keen to holiday in Britain.”
Similarly, the focus of Tourism New Zealand’s marketing strategy is to draw more MICE travellers from India in addition to the leisure footfall from here. Steven Dixon, Regional Manager, South & South East Asia, Tourism New Zealand said that Tourism New Zealand has enhanced its focus to tap the Indian business events sector, including meetings, conferences, events and incentives in a big way. “As part of our strategy to create a big push for MICE business in India, we have on a pilot basis in partnership with our immigration department have accorded six MICE agents Visa-Priority status,” he said.
