Maharaja Gaj Singh, Jose Dominic and SSH Rehman told I Kaur how some interesting promotional campaigns and slogans can give Indian tourism a new direction
In December 2012 a survey revealed that there were one billion foreign travels made in the world that year out of which only two million were to India. At the same time another survey done in India stated that we were short of 1,80,000 rooms in India for sustainable tourism and needed over Rs 1,27,000 crore to provide for those rooms.
The Indian Hotels Heritage Association (IHHA) recently brought out these points at their annual convention in Jodhpur while the members discussed the philosophy of ‘Incredible India and Beyond.’ Jose Dominic, CEO Coconut lagoon, shared, “Tourism, culture and heritage are all interconnected. However, it attracts very little percentage of the union budget. As per today, the cultural ministry has allotted only 0.33 per cent of the union budget. There is a lot of investment required in this industry and what nobody realises is that this industry also provides heavy returns on that investment.”
At the start of the discussion, SSH Rehman, director ITC limited, stated, “We need to stop looking at incredible India but incomparable India.”
In the same context, Dominic elaborated, “The Incredible India campaign has been on for over 10 years and after the first two to three years, the impact was almost negligible. If this was another country, they would have come up with something that would have rejuvenated the same campaign. That is why countries like Sri lanka and Egypt are doing well. They promote themselves very well. Why can’t we be innovative and come up with slogans like Heritage India, Beaches India or Ayurveda IndiaIJ What we need to do is, start a new thought process altogether and use diversity as a tool for enhancement.
He pointed out one of the reasons for the lack of tourism initiative in the country. “There are a few things because of which we have lost synergy. One of them is the division of the tourism, culture and aviation ministry. The moment this sector got trifurcated, we lost out on our heritage, culture and tourism. The worst part is that we are always competing with each other. The ministry heads are in a race as to whose ministry will do better. The linkages are missing and that is creating havoc in this sector,” he explained.
Dominic feels that we waste most of our time thinking and discussing which leads to zero implementation. The mindset of people needs altering, he said. “When we look at a broken monument and don’t care about it. In fact, we immediately write it off. Everybody wants things to be perfect. We can’t get anything perfect. We need to work towards making it perfect.”
Maharaja Gaj Singh feels that every state needs to develop their own USP to attract tourists. He said, “There are two things that are severely affecting the tourism industry in India today — violence against women and the economic downturn. In order to battle this every state individually must assure the tourist complete safety and give him the value for his money.”
Dominic signed off the discussion with a quote from Mark Twain, “India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most astrictive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only! This is how India was. Now we need to make sure that this is how India will be.”