As a part of its marketing development strategy, Department of Tourism, Philippines recently branded 100 radio cabs and 100 BEST buses in Mumbai. Rajshree Birla, Consul General (A.H), Consulate General of Republic of Philippines inaugurated this recently.
The year 2015 was phenomenal and DOT’s marketing campaign, ‘Visit the Philippines Year 2015 (VPY 2015) which is an invitation to experience “It’s More Fun in the Philippines,” was a big hit. The Indian market has continued to be one of the important contributors of international visitors to the Philippines. India has jumped up to the twelfth position for tourist arrivals in the Philippines till September this year, with over 22.40 per cent more Indians choosing the country as their preferred travel destination. Month of February in 2015 showed the impressive growth of arrivals to almost 40 percent.
The growth in arrivals could be attributed to the marketing efforts and participation of the country in international travel fairs as well as tourism infrastructure development being undertaken. India’s growing outbound tourist markets are an important source of visitors to the Philippines. We want to leverage on our tourism product offerings and attract the Indian traveller to achieve our target of 100,000 tourist arrivals by 2017. In addition, Indian travellers holding any of the valid and current AJACSSUK visas (US, Japan, Australia, Canada, Schengen, Singapore and UK) are allowed visa free entry into the Philippines for a period of 14 days.
Navritu Rai, Account Director, Philippines Tourism Marketing Office, India, said “DOT is focusing on consumer promotions for 2015 and 2016 and we feel that branding taxis and buses are an appropriate method to promote the Philippines as a fun destination since these cover print as well as mobile form of advertising – this increases number of eyeballs and awareness and presence of the Philippines in the India market”
