Creative ways to lure travellers to God’s Own Country that has two ports of call and unique tourism products has been a challenge for the planners and stakeholders of the tourism industry.
The strong presence of Keralites in social media was explored on Tuesday to let the world know about Kerala and to increase the footfalls during the ongoing Visit Kerala Year.
The innovative campaign in the virtual world was formally kicked off at 11 a.m. with former diplomat and local MP Shashi Tharoor tweeting, “A natural port beautifully located in a quaint fishing village # Vizhinjam” to hash tag #Daivathinteswan thumnadu (in Malayalam).
Soon the fans of God’s Own Country around the world enthusiastically tweeted to the hash tag accompanied by images of the tourist attractions of the State in large numbers.
Within three hours, the campaign became trending in Twitter and was in the fourth position. Actor Prithviraj and Navya Nair were those who tweeted.
By 5 p.m., around 5,000 fresh tweets and more than 10,000 photographs of tourist attractions were shared. The innovative destination promotion campaign was seen by over 50 lakh. The campaign pictures are also available athttp://attoi.org/campaign.htmland in Facebook.
Kerala Tourism extended support to the Association of Tourism Trade Organisations India (ATTOI) for the campaign and provided 200 new photographs, videos and stories.
Over 200 Malayali associations were also roped in. “The idea came from the industry. It is a new generation crowd sourcing campaign. We are happy to extend support to the industry to increase the footfalls,” Secretary, Tourism, V. Venu, told The Hindu .
“Kerala is a unique tourist destination. But the promotional efforts haven’t able to bring in the desired number of tourists. The fact is many travellers are unaware of its uniqueness and hence we thought of this virtual world campaign. It’s an overwhelming success,” said ATTOI president Anish Kumar P. K.
Three years ago, Kerala Tourism had relied on Twitter to launch its new ‘Great Backwaters’ campaign to unveil the majestic backwaters as a single destination and a once-in-a-lifetime experience like the Great Wall of China or the Grand Canyon of the United States.
