Recognizing the power of the growing Indian outbound travel, many of the provinces and cities of the United States of America has strengthened their presence in the India market. However, there is few waiting for the opportune time to enter into the India market, And, Washington DC is one of them which recently forayed into India leveraging on the might of the IPW, the travel industry’s premier international marketplace, scheduled to be held in Washington from June 3-7, 2017.
“We probably should have been in India much earlier. India is a strong and emerging market for Washington, DC and the region with lots of potential in terms of leisure travel and business development. In visitation numbers, we have over 80,000 Indian visitors coming to Washington DC in 2015, making India the 6th largest and one of the fastest growing market for us. The growth is over 10 per cent over the last year. We are here to build awareness about the varied tourism offerings of the Washington DC. We see the interest, potential new relationship with new airlines. We are also the host city for the IPW 2017 and we want to capitalize on this,” Elliott Ferguson, President and CEO, Destination DC, the official marketing organisation for Washington DC, said during a media interaction in New Delhi. Ferguson was leading a delegation of Washington Dulles International Airport, Etihad Airways and IPW in India to present Washington DC as a tourism hub for leisure and fun.
Ferguson further said, “We will be back in the market in the near future and look at making sure that India is a part of our ongoing sales process. We plan to work on India with a long term strategy,” he added.
Replying to question on the DC being a destination for business travelers, Ferguson said that Washington DC is fortunate enough of doing a fairly large amount of convention business. “But, we already actually arrived as a leisure market. Domestically, we are perceived as leisure destination as domestic market knows the offerings of the DC. Internationally, it is perceived as a house of the US government. We are encouraging media, travel and tour operators to come to DC and see how diverse is our offerings,” he added.
To support his argument, he informed that the largest per cent of travelers coming from India are leisure travelers. “Together, the Capital region encompassing Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland, gets 41 per cent leisure travelers and 28 per cent business travelers of the total travelers it receives,” he informed.
Talking on the future roadmap, he said that the hospitality industry will do extremely well under President-elect because he is from the hospitality industry. “The President-elect truly understands the hospitality industry. He has been a huge benefactor of the hotels and casinos that he owned and I think he will continue to maintain the interest in additional visitation to the United States. As a matter of fact, the US Travel Association has already interfaced with his administration, the incoming administration, to talk about some of our priorities. I know that the CEO of Marriott International has already sent a letter to the President-elect referencing some of the priorities for the industry,” he added.
IPW has always benefitted the host city in terms of visitation and contribution to the economy. The host city has witnessed a million additional visitors and US$1.7 billion in economic impact to the host city over the next three years of hosting the IPW. IPW is attended by more than 6,000 attendees from over 70 countries, including 1,300 international and domestic travel buyers.
