Kerala Tourism is trying to leverage on domestic tourism by tapping among other things ‘young at heart tourists’ who depend on online tourism opinion making search engines to plan their holiday, P. Bala Kiran, Director of Tourism, has said.
Interacting with the five selected couples who participated in the 10-day ‘#GoKerala’ campaign organised by Kerala Tourism in association with HolidayIQ to promote State tourism here, Mr. Bala Kiran said the State valued the crowdsourced content and wanted to create a niche product based on that.
“Tourism is not confined to destination and it is about journey. We want to leverage on domestic tourism and opinion-making community to increase footfalls. This has been spelled out in the tourism policy. Kerala is a family destination and the State wants families to flydown, ” he said.
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Despite 92% of the tourists coming to the State falling under the domestic category, Kerala Tourism has not been giving adequate emphasis to that sector. In the last three years, domestic tourists are coming from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Mumbai and Delhi to the State. The Director said Kerala Tourism had decided to reorient the strategy based on such travel trends and statistics.
After the European market platooned, the State had already started looking towards Middle East, which showed a marked 200% increase in arrivals into the State during the last two years.
Mr. Bala Kiran said marketing of the destination and tourism products had started moving from tour operators and travel agents to direct or online travel aggregators.
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Foreigners still resorted to traditional methods due to security reasons but domestic tourists did not have such fear, the Director said. “We may be lagging behind if we avoid digital technology. Domestic tourism is the bread and butter for Kerala”.