The Ministry of Tourism recently launched two new campaigns under ‘Incredible India’ – the international campaign ‘Find What You Seek’ and the domestic Campaign ‘Go Beyond’. These campaigns were launched at the recently concluded WTM London by Union Tourism Minister K. Chiranjeevi. According to him, the launch of these campaigns reflects a very important paradigm shift in the ministry’s strategy to promote India within the country and abroad. “Till now we had been promoting India internationally from the point of view of the destinations. The Incredible India campaign which we launched in 2002 has been extremely successful. In our ‘Take II’ of the campaign, we are going to focus on the consumer,” he said. He opined that tourists from world over can find the destination or product of desire in India, be it heritage, nature, adventure, culture, medical, wellness, religion or shopping.
Speaking about the two campaigns, Chiranjeevi explained that the ‘Find What You Seek’ campaign promotes India as a destination that offers something for everyone, with a range of unique products. The ‘Go Beyond’ campaign, he added, focuses on promoting lesser known destinations to domestic as well as international tourists.
“My efforts would be to make tourism India’s main economic and political agenda, taking all state governments, union territory administrations and stakeholders on board, and establishing India as a round-the-year destination,” he said and added that his ministry’s focus would be to further develop and promote niche products like Rural Tourism, Wellness and Medical Tourism, Cruise Tourism, Adventure and Wildlife Tourism, Film Tourism, Sports Tourism and MICE. He further stated that he is aware of hygiene and sanitation concerns in the country for which the ‘Campaign Clean India’ will continue its work.
While attending WTM, Chiranjeevi participated in the UNWTO Ministers’ Summit to discuss the subject ‘Open Borders and Open Skies: Breaking Barriers to Travel’, and held discussions with Taleb Rafai, Secretary General, UNWTO and Tourism Ministers of UK and South Africa. He assured them that India will continue to play an important and pro-active role for promoting global tourism. He added that India would be hosting the next meeting of the UNWTO Regional Commission for South Asia and Far East & Pacific in April – May next year in Hyderabad. India is the current Chairperson of the UNWTO Regional Commission for South Asia.
Revealing his plan to provide impetus to the tourism sector, the Minister said that his endeavour would be to facilitate the development of synergy between various departments/ ministries, state governments, union territories and industry for the development of tourism. Furthermore, he expressed his ambition to make India an affordable destination by facilitating the development of budget accommodation, easing visa regime, expanding the VoA scheme to additional important source market countries, expanding human resource base and creating new employment opportunities. He also spoke of initiating dialogue for a MoU with UK on tourism cooperation following UK’s withdrawal of its tourism advisory against travel to Jammu and Kashmir.
