KERALA TOURISM CAMPAIGN, 1989 - TICKETS TO PARADISE

All it took was a catchy tagline-'God's Own Country'-for the world to discover Kerala's wealth of natural beauty. It remains among the best tourism ad campaigns, earning the state a place among top 10 international destinations

- BY SONAL KHETARPAL

Kerala, often synonymous with the ‘God’s Own Country’ catch-phrase, is a perfect example of how marketing transformed a sliver of a state on India’s southern tip into a global tourism hotspot. Kerala had it all, verdant tea gardens (Munnar), breathtaking backwaters (Alleppey), hills (Wayanad), a rich tapestry of dance forms. Yet, the state was known to the outside world only for the beaches of Kovalam. But that was the 1980s when tourism in India was nascent, with the Golden Triangle (Agra, Delhi, Jaipur), Kashmir and maybe Udaipur being a handful of destinations recognised globally.

In 1989, Kerala launched a marketing campaign to promote tourism, becoming the first state in the country to do so. Its iconic tagline, ‘God’s Own Country’, proved to be a pivotal moment that would change the face of India tourism. The tagline may have come from the late Walter Mendis but it was Harshan T.K., currently the chairperson of the Thiruvananthapuram-based Stark Communications, who established it as a brand. Amitabh Kant, then Kerala’s tourism secretary and the key architect of the campaign, writes in his book,