Thematic tourism

With Indian travellers becoming more discerning and demanding, the idea of selling theme-based packages or niche products has surfaced. The question is, whether this concept will work better in luring domestic travellers over the tried and tested pure destination selling. In the first of this two part series, Achal Dhruva explores this growing trend

The Iraq war and SARS epidemic has affected the Indian outbound market in a big way. Summer is the traditional holiday season in the country and over the past few years families have developed a penchant for jaunts to foreign locales, especially South East Asia.

Besides ‘hard sell’ these countries offer highly competitive packages (cheaper than few exotic destinations in India like Andamans, Lakshwadeep, Ladakh etc) luring the new generation of middle and upper middle class with high disposable incomes. However, the combined ‘War and SARS’ effect has shattered that dream of a ‘phoren’ vacation. This can be substantiated by the fact that most big tour operators have reported a decline of 30-40 per cent in outbound sales.

The travel industry in the country has yet again been buffeted by events beyond their control but unlike the aftermath of 9/11 and the travel advisories against India, this time round the situation could be a ‘boon’ in disguise. The domestic market, acknowledged for years as ‘a sleeping giant,’ is now taking center stage. Focus had begun to shift toward this vast potential market and this summer has witnessed concrete steps in tapping this segment.

Advertisement spends targeting the domestic market have been doubled by most tour operators and even big companies like SOTC, Thomas Cook, TCI (Travel Corporation of India), Cox and Kings, Raj Travels, traditionally strong on the outbound market have come up with a flurry of packages to woo domestic travellers. Kuoni India has launched SITA Holidays of India, 1001 itineraries encompassing the entire gamut of holiday options in India.

"You have got to sell India to Indians," is the firm conviction of Ashish Kumar Singh, managing director, Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC). In his opinion, the conviction that India is a wonderful place is slowly gaining ground amongst domestic travellers. According to him, nothing new needs to be done besides making domestic travellers aware of the destinations and creating new destinations.

"Known destinations get saturated over a period of time and investments should be made in developing and marketing virgin destinations. Tarkarli and Vengurla were unheard of two years ago, but today, they are much sought after getaways," explained Singh. According to him, the need of the hour is to make our country fashionable for the ‘phoren fixated’.

The award-winning advertising campaign of MTDC that was the recipient of the PATA Gold Award 2002, is designed on the same principle. For example, they have a picture of a thickly wooded road with two boxes below, Fontaineblue Forest, France and Matheran. The text of ad is, "If you clicked Fontainebleau Forest, France, we have good news for you. It’s shifted to approximately 105 kilometres from Mumbai."

With the Indian traveller becoming more discerning and demanding, the idea of selling theme-based packages or niche products has surfaced. The question is will this concept work better in luring the domestic traveller over the tried and tested pure destination selling. While many tourism boards, especially of the newly formed states of Uttaranchal and Chhattisgarh have laid a heavy emphasis on theme-based tourism, there has been a mixed response from the tour operators.

Chhattisgarh Tourism Board is planning to hire specialist consultants to prepare perspective plans and micro plans both sector-wise and geographical area wise, covering various tourist attractions. According to Dr A Jayathilak, Chhattisgarh Tourism, the focus will be on special interest and niche areas like wildlife tourism, eco-tourism, ethno-tourism, archeological tourism, adventure tourism, cave tourism, industrial tourism, rural tourism and a lot more. Uttaranchal meanwhile has concentrated on religious and adventure tourism creating packages combining both while Karnataka has given major thrust on eco and adventure tourism.

"We need to create small niches where you can get high value tourists. We should focus on quality and not quantity because a destination has never succeeded due to mass tourism. It is the high value tourists who give focus to any destination, set the trend and tourists en mass follow. It is therefore essential and important to create unique niches. Tourism today is based on experiences. The private sector should strive to create new experiences by offering interesting packages," statedAmitabh Kant, joint secretary, department of tourism, ministry of tourism and culture, Government of India.

Acknowledging that while the domestic market is the fastest growing sector in the travel industry,Rustom Dhanbhoora, COO, SITA, felt it has not been regulated and realised to its full potential by any large player or otherwise. "With the introduction of SITA Holidays of India, we cover a multitude of destinations and also offer theme-based packages like adventure holidays covering skiing, white water river rafting, mountaineering, trekking, scuba diving etc. Beach holidays, heritage holidays covering palaces and forts of Rajasthan, wellness holidays providing holistic treatments of mind and body at spa and health resorts across India, wildlife holidays, spiritual retreats and a host of others," informed Dhanbhoora. He further added, "We are looking at targeting at least 15,000 tourists in the first year of operations."

"There are no real statistics but domestic market is 50 times bigger than outbound and for TCI, the break up is a 60:40 ratio with regards to domestic and outbound," stated Meher Bhandara, general manager, corporate communications, TCI. According to her soft adventure tours, wildlife tours, heritage property tours and health tourism comprising of spa and ayurvedic packages are picking up.