Belarus has appointed Delhi based Salvia Promoters, a destination marketing company, as its tourism representation office in India. The appointment is aimed at growing its share of India’s outbound travel market. Belarus currently welcomes around 2000 Indians a year, with an estimated 75 per cent of these visits comprising business travel.
A MoU in this regard was signed in the presence of Vladimir Semashko, Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Belarus in New Delhi recently on the sidelines of the state visit of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenku to India in september marking 25 year of diplomatic relation between the two countries this year. The agreement was signed by Filipp Guly, Chairman of Belarusian Touristic Union and Prashant Chaudhary, Managing Director, Salvia Promoters, representing Belarus Tourism and Salvia respectively.
Commenting on the appointment of Salvia Promoters as Belarus Tourism’s India office, Guly said, “With close to 23 million annual overseas visits, India as a tourism source market is already huge and is recording strong growth year-on-year. Besides Indian travellers are big spender and a major contributor to tourism economy of the host destination. It was high time we established our presence in India and this could not have come at a better time as the two countries celebrates 25th anniversary of diplomatic relation this year. Going forward we are looking at considerably increasing our promotional activities in India in order to create greater awareness about Belarus.”
Furthermore, Guly also said, “Not only are our people very friendly, but as a former Soviet Union region Belarusian have the best memories of Indians and India’s culture. Therefore when Indian tourists come to Belarus, they will enjoy greater hospitality.”
“Our expertise in Russia and former Soviet Union countries like Belarus is unparalleled. We opened Russian market to Indian travellers 15 years ago and today there are about 100,000 Indian travelling to Russia every year. As Belarus tourism representative office in India our primary objective would be to grow Indian arrivals into the country. Going forward, both trade and consumers would see a lot more of Belarus through participation in travel exhibitions and marts and road shows in not just the bigger cities like Delhi and Mumbai but also smaller tier cities. Besides, our outreach programme will also include aggressive media and PR activities, digital promotion, familiarisation tour of trade and media, among others,” Chaudhary added.
