The resumption of international flight services from March 27, 2022, waning of the impact of the Covid-19 variant omicron and opening of the international borders augurs well for the Indian outbound travel and tourism industry. Destinations across the globe are beelining for the Indian tourists and have activated their multi-city marketing and promotional campaigns in the India market. Not only destinations, but international products are also aiming to woo Indian tourists. Stakeholders are tweaking their strategy to instill confidence among stakeholders.
This is evident from the fact that post the announcement of the resumption of the international flights by the Govt of India, major airlines have announced their India schedule. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) of India approved 60 airlines from 40 countries to operate 1,783 weekly international flights from India during the summer schedule 2022. Airlines such as Emirates, Sri Lankan Airlines, Oman Air, Air Arabia, Qatar Airways, Gulf Air, Etihad, AirAsia Berhad, Kuwait Airways, Singapore Airlines, British Airways, Lufthansa, Malaysian Airlines, United, Air France, KLM and Lot Polish and others have already announced the resumption of India service. Most of these airlines work closely with their country’s respective tourism boards to bring international traffic.
Moreover, the DGCA has also allowed Indian airlines to operate up to 1,466 weekly international departures during the summer schedule. Among Indian airlines, IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express, SpiceJet, GoFirst and Vistara will be flying on international sectors. “A total of 1,466 departures per week have been approved to 43 destinations in 27 countries (United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Singapore, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Qatar, Maldives, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Turkey, Malaysia, United Kingdom, France, Kenya, Germany, USA, Canada, Myanmar, Australia, Israel, Bahrain, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Russia),” DGCA said in the statement.
Meanwhile, UNWTO states that global international tourist arrivals more than doubled (+130%) in January 2022 compared to 2021 – the 18 million more visitors recorded worldwide in the first month of this year equals the total increase for the whole of 2021.
Encouraging response
Countries have high hope from the Indian outbound market as major National Tourists Offices (NTOs) witnessed double digit growth in Indian arrivals before pandemic. The emerging global scenario also favours India as a sought-after outbound market. There is a pent-up demand for the travel and people have accepted to live with the pandemic.
“The feedback we received so far from the travel trade fraternity is tremendous. Agents are already receiving lots of queries for packages as well as MICE groups movement to Malaysia. All we need to do now is to ensure that potential travelers received the pertinent information required for them to make the decision to select a destination. With our border opening beginning April 1, which was timely with the resumption of the commercial flight, I am confident Malaysia will be able to get good numbers of Indian travelers for 2022,” Sulaiman Suip, Director, Tourism Malaysia – New Delhi, informed.
Suip further said that India is a mature market, and we believe outbound travel will rebound quickly. “It won’t take long for the situation to reach the pre-pandemic level once again. In fact, there is already a 400 pax group going to Malaysia on April 15,” he revealed.
H. Deniz Ersoz, Culture and Tourism Counsellor, Embassy of The Republic of Turkey in India welcomes the resumption of the international flight services. “We are very happy to see that all international flights services resumed with full capacity by 27th of March. With the resumption of direct flights between our countries we are confident that touristic flow will increase in both ways. The country witnessed 52 million travellers in 2019, touching a whopping USD 34.5 billion in tourism revenue. Of these, 2.3 lakh were Indian nationals, which is the highest number of Indian travellers recorded till date, by the country. Despite the pandemic, Turkiye emerged as one of the top destinations for FIT and MICE tourists from around the world in 2021, by welcoming over 30 million international visitors. Thus, with the upliftment of travel restrictions and resumption of direct flights to Turkiye from India, we plan to host similar number of visitors in 2022 as we had in 2019 from India,” Ersoz informed.
Venessa Chen, Regional Consumer Marketing Manager, Asia, Tourism New Zealand, is also quite optimistic on the India market. “We look forward to welcoming our Indian manuhiri [visitors], family and friends to New Zealand when the border opens to fully vaccinated Indian visitors from October 2022. We believe that there is pent up demand for travel to New Zealand from the Indian market. We are also very appreciative of our Indian trade partners who continue to prepare to sell New Zealand by investing in improving destination knowledge through the New Zealand Specialists Programme and training sessions, in addition to making use of trade resources such as our marketing hub and travel trade website,” Chen said.
Positioning in India
The pandemic has forced countries across the world to focus on sustainable, responsible, and green tourism. This resulted into NTOs adopting dispersal approach by encouraging tourists to visit lesser crowded tourism spots. Almost all countries, while keeping their main segments intact, also diversifying and introducing new products.
Malaysia will continue to position itself as an eco-tourism destination with lots of exciting activities for all ages. “Consumers can again immerse themselves in Malaysia, Truly Asia experience of exhilarating highlands, vast jungles with a variety of flora and fauna, vibrant cities, beautiful beaches with crystal clear water for scuba diving or snorkeling. Malaysia also makes a great value for money shopping destination, especially for the ladies and a variety of ultra-modern Theme Parks make us a holistic family destination,” Suip said and added that another important segment is to position Malaysia as a Wedding Destination for Indian couples. “In 2019, around 25 weddings were organized in Malaysia and popular properties like Lexis Hibiscus had back-to-back wedding events at their resort. Besides the leisure and wedding segments, we will also continue to focus on the MICE segment. Highlighting the state of art facilities, easy accessibility and convenient entry formality that have made Malaysia one of the favorite destinations for the Indian MICE industry,” Suip added.
Similarly, Turkiye has also adopted new approach to woo international travelllers and the result is seen in 2021 when the country received over 30 million international visitors. “India is considered as one of the most potential emerging tourism markets for our country. Hence, we will continue to conduct different marketing activities in India in 2022 and we will actively promote our country as a family, wedding and MICE destination in India, and strive for increasing the numbers of Indian tourists visiting Turkiye. In addition to FITs, in 2022 we will have different type of promotional activities especially in the field of wedding and MICE tourism in India as well,” Ersoz said.
According to Ersoz, 2018 and 2019 were very successful years for Turkish Tourism in India. “We hosted more than 2.3 lakh Indian tourists in 2019 with an increase of 55% in comparison with 2018. This number was a record for us in India,” he added.
Promotional activities
NTOs had to keep digital marketing and promotional activities as the mainstay during the pandemic. Understanding their requirements to stay connected with the Indian travel trade fraternity, stakeholders accelerated their marketing efforts by hosting webinars, digital media interactions and bombarding relevant information through social media.
“We have been conducting different digital promotional activities since Jan 2022. Now with the resumption of international flights, we plan to continue our traffic campaign communications throughout the year as we did in the first quarter of 2022. Additionally, we will keep organizing fam trips for Indian influencers and bloggers as they cater to a large number of audiences of potential tourists,” Ersoz said and added that as a classical type of promotional activities, this year we will be more active in the market by conducting different activities such as multicity roadshows, workshops and B2B and B2C fam trips. “We will be targeting to reach corporates, wedding planners and Indian families by doing different type of promotional activities,” he added.
New Zealand is also dialling up their PR activities by creating inspirational content while working with new media platforms, key social influencers to build strong word of mouth and generate media interest. “We maintain a strong relationship with the Indian travel trade fraternity and are constantly building brand in our trade work by driving engagement and building New Zealand knowledge within the community,” Chen informed.
As most Indians are already familiar with what Malaysia has to offer, hence Malaysia’s marketing activities will emphasize introducing the new Malaysia and the latest developments to consumers and continue to spread awareness of what they already know. “This year, we have planned to actively conduct Joint Promotion campaign activities with agents and airlines in the market. We will work together with them to promote their packages so that they will be able to sell more packages to Malaysia. These campaigns will entail lots of seminars, roadshows, products update presentations and advertisements in print and digital etc. With social media communication becoming increasingly important we plan to come up with educative, engaging and entertaining content. Apart from that, we have lined up several educational or familiarization tour trips for Key Opinion Leaders, agents and media so that they can have firsthand experience of the products available in Malaysia,” Suip revealed.
Focus on sustainable tourism
Tourism New Zealand is committed to taking action to operate sustainably as crown entity and supporting the sector via Qualmark to encourage sustainability. “Owned by TNZ, Qualmark helps businesses become more sustainable from a people, planet and profit perspective. Qualmark assesses and recognises businesses that are delivering a sustainable experience. Businesses are awarded a bronze, silver or gold award depending on their performance against the Sustainable Tourism Business criteria. TNZ also support the Tiaki – Care for New Zealand initiative which promotes and encourages safe and sustainable travel practices,” Chen stated.
Malaysia has long adopted a sustainable tourism approach as a development strategy that has already become a dominant source of income and employment generation, and an economic contributor to the GDP. “A sound infrastructure, convenient communication, and adequate internet facilities have been important catalysts for sustainable tourism in Malaysia. In December 2020, in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, Malaysia launched its 10-year plan focused on strengthening competitiveness, encouraging sustainable and inclusive tourism, as well as planning for future disasters. It also seeks to further its commitment to brand Malaysia as an ecotourism destination, with an outlook towards balancing the development and conservation of its natural environment and heritage,” Suip said.
Turkiye signed a collaboration agreement with the world’s top environment and sustainability platform GSTC to ensure the protection of their natural assets and make tourism sustainable. “This was definitely a milestone of our Ministry as the agreement with GSTC made Turkiye the first government in the world to sign an agreement to develop a national program. Within the scope of this program, the Turkish tourism industry will be restructured gradually and begin to adopt global sustainability practices. In the first stage of the agreement, which Turkiye signed as a government with the utmost gravity towards sustainability, the national program criteria will be determined, and inspection firms will receive trainings. The program is planned to be wholly concluded by 2030. The first stage of the program will become operational in 2023; and the second stage will be carried out gradually in 2025. In 2030, all international standards will be met,” Ersoz informed.
Importance of B2B
B2B will continue to play an important role for the tourism industry in India as agents are still keen to meet face to face. “In fact, Tourism Malaysia after two years of border closing, has chosen India as our first destination in the world to organize our post-pandemic inaugural roadshow. Tourism Malaysia together with a 40 members delegation comprising agents, hoteliers, products owners, and state tourism boards is hosting roadshows in six cities beginning on 18 April in Delhi followed by Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and concluding in Chennai at the end of the month,” Suip revealed.
For Turkiye also, the B2B side of trade has always been of great importance. “Now with travel trade market opening, we would surely want to educate them with the right product information focusing on those areas which we have missed during the travel restriction period, and we shall put our best efforts so they can obtain much more business for Turkey. Additionally, we will continue with the potential collaborations and engagements with travel organizations like Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) and Outbound Tour Operators Association of India (OTOAI) which will definitely enable Turkey Tourism in India to a great extent,” Ersoz said.
New Zealand also has an extensive travel trade program in 2022-2023 to help make New Zealand a desirable destination to promote and to sell. These include trade training, and industry event participation such as attendance at SATTE. “We are also looking forward to launching our own event, Kiwi Link Asia later this year. The 100% Pure New Zealand Marketing Hub, launched in September 2021. Designed to empower our agents with the right kind of information and assets that can creatively engage their customers and ultimately help make their job easier and more effective in promoting and selling New Zealand,” Chen said.
