With an estimated 1.4 million Indians ‘seriously’ considering to travel abroad over the next 2 years, the tourism department of Canada is busy chalking out fresh plans to lure them to various destinations. launching the new Destination Canada promotion campaigns in New Delhi on Saturday through the radio taxis, the tourism department says it has lined up a number of activities with Indian tour operators and other partners to catch India’s attention to Canada. Radio and digital campaigns are among the few lined up along with partnering with a lifestyle brand targeting high-end shopping malls. “We are looking at the affluent and upper middle class travellers who would be keen to travel and explore various destinations in Canada.
Emerging middle class is increasingly becoming independent holiday market,” said MD, Destination Canada, Rupert Peters. He added that the major traffic to Canada traditionally has been from Delhi and Mumbai, cities like Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Nagpur etc are also fast catching up on outbound travel due to lot of dispensable income as Canada is targeting Tier 1, Tier 2 cities to gather more traffic.
As per calculations, Indians stay in Canada for at least 2 weeks, though the average is 33 days, during which they spend anything between $1400 to $1500 per person, excluding airfare. Compared to this Americans stay in Canada for about 2-3 days. As per Destination Canada, the tourism expenditures by Indian visitors touched $280 million in 2014. Over half (53.5%) of Indian visitors to Canada travelled to visit friends and relatives (VFR) and over a quarter (27.5%) for business.