Beyond Incredible India!

The ‘Incredible India’ campaign was launched in 2002 by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India to promote India as a global tourist destination. Sagnik Chowdhury, Regional Director (East), India Tourism, spoke to BE’s Aritra Mitra.

- 

Q. How far has the ‘Incredible India’ campaign impacted the Indian tourism sector?

A. It was in 2000 that renewed focus was given to bring inbound tourists to India. For this, the ‘Incredible India’ campaign was initiated in 2002, aimed at capturing the attention of foreign markets. In order to establish India as a global tourist spot, the term ‘Incredible India’ was coined. This campaign ran for many years and has done its job by creating a new outlook for India in the global forum.

Of late, India has focused on sector-based tourism and has achieved significant success. For instance, India has grown into a major medical tourism and wellness tourism hub. The exotic locales of India have helped in the emergence of adventure tourism like skating, mountaineering, camping, paragliding and scuba diving. Due to the geographical diversity, India can be a major hub for adventure sports and the tourism ministry is looking to promote India as an adventure tourism destination. Similarly, the ministry is also promoting golf tourism to attract high-spending tourists. To attract tourists for these different sectors, we have recently started the ‘Incredible India 2.0’ campaign. Earlier, we mainly focused on destination-based tourism but now we have tried to shift our focus to product-based tourism.

Q. What are the marketing objectives of the India Tourism offices abroad?