Oregon Tourism Commission has witnessed a 40 per cent growth from the India market between 2010 and 2015. “1.1 million Indian visitors travelled to the USA with a 17 per cent growth in 2015 over 2014. For us in Oregon, we are capturing about one per cent of that market right now, it’s a good start for us. It’s a market with a great opportunity for us. We have seen visitation grow about 40 per cent between 2010 and 2015 to Oregon. We have been here for four years participating along with Brand USA. We have already created awareness in India, but still a lot more has to be done. We have seen the results,” Todd Davison, Chief Executive Officer, Oregon Tourism Commission (OTC), said.
OTC is now focusing to target more Indian travellers; especially the millennial travellers. The destination is promoting a lot of adventure based activities and experiential tourism to India. “We have incredible natural beauty with a beautiful coast which is entirely public. We have the high desert, mountain ranges, we have agricultural valleys. In Indian market, there is opportunity to promote outdoor activities. Culinary is a major theme for us, food trucks, wine country, farm to table concept. Oregon has been named as the number one wine region in the world by wine enthusiast magazine recently. So, we will provide wine products and experiences to the Indian travellers. We have a lot of craft breweries. Third is shopping, we are home of Nike and many other brands. Travellers can come and shop at the headquarters of such famous brands. Also there is no sales tax and we have large factory outlet malls. These three themes resonate very well with the Indian market,” he informed.
With scenic landscaping, Oregon is an ideal destination for self drives. The government is also building new pathways to attract cyclists. “We have one of the best scenic byway programmes. Self Drive is very popular in Oregon. It’s a part of the Federal programme. We provide various itineraries. Many of our millennial visitors are interested in cycling, there are scenic bikeways as well and more are being developed. We have businesses catering to cyclists; we are leveraging that market as well,” he said.
The Commission is promoting the leisure travel aggressively in India. But on the MICE side the destination is currently focusing on the incentive travel. “We haven’t started promoting MICE in a big way in India. We are promoting the golf product and spa product along with high end boutique hotels to the India market for the incentives segment. The meeting and convention component a lot of them are done by Portland, where there are big exposition and convention centres,” he said.
