Initiated a slew of marketing and promotional activities to draw more numbers
More than two years, when the Covid-19 pandemic halted long-distance travel in India, domestic travel was triggered by a huge spike. While it was witnessed that travelers preferred to travel within the country due to travel restrictions in other nations, Kerala Tourism Department was seen to get quite a hold of the elated section of travelers when the authority slew out a set of programs in the past few months.
To sustain this motive for the winter, Kerala Tourism frames new ideas to attract higher number of visitors from within the country and outside. PA Mohamed Riyas, Tourism Minister, Kerala, said that the just-concluded festival season was positive for Kerala’s tourism with a large number of domestic tourists visiting the state and reaffirming its touristy appeal in the post-COVID phase.
“We are looking forward to promoting the winter holiday season even in a bigger way in Kerala,” he said and informed that Kerala has been included in TIME magazine’s 50 Extraordinary Destinations of the World to explore in 2022. Kerala has set up tourism products like houseboats, caravan, jungle lodges, plantation visits, homestays, Ayurveda-based wellness solutions, and countrywide walks besides adventure activities.
To tap the potential of these segments, the government has planned a series of travel trade networking activities, starting with a Partnership Meet in Mumbai, including participation in trade fairs and organizing B2B roadshows to introduce the new products to a wider audience.
According to a release, Kerala recorded a total of 1,33,80,000 domestic tourists in the nine months till September 2022, registering a 1.49 percent increase as compared to the same period of pre-COVID 2019. ‘Keravan Kerala’, the state’s game-changing caravan tourism initiative, has elicited a tremendous response from the industry within a short period of time. “The considerable uptick in domestic tourist arrivals was made possible by showcasing new products like ‘Keravan Kerala’, which were ably complemented by meticulously crafted promotional and marketing strategies that included participation in Kerala Travel Mart. Our new initiatives to promote tourism are in tune with ecological imperatives and sustainability,” K S Srinivas, Principal Secretary – Tourism Govt. of Kerala, said.
Srinivas informed that the state’s tourism and hospitality industry has already regained the pre-pandemic level robustness. Kerala recorded a staggering 196 per cent spike in domestic tourist arrivals during the first three quarters of the current year as compared to the corresponding period a year earlier.
P B Nooh, Director – Tourism, Govt. of Kerala said that Kerala has made elaborate plans to give an effective thrust to showcase Kerala’s new products as well as its core assets like beaches, hill stations, houseboats and backwater segment to heighten the totality of visitor experience.
Various media such as print, TV, radio and digital platform are also being leveraged for this purpose, where efforts are contributed in full throttle to showcase Kerala as an absolutely safe, alluring and hospitable destination for visitors from across the globe.
As part of the domestic events, Kerala Tourism will attend trade fairs like OTM (Outbound Travel Market) Mumbai; South Asian Travel and Tourism Exchange (SATTE), New Delhi; and TTF Chennai and also organize roadshows in Pune, Nagpur, and Indore during early November.
Targeting the most from the winter season, the recently concluded Champions Boat League (CBL) and the globally acclaimed Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), to be held during December 2022-April 2023, is also expected to attract tourists from both India and abroad. Besides, another series of B2B trade meets have been planned in Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Vadodara and Surat during December to reconnect with the travel trade stakeholders.
Kuhelika Roy Choudhury
