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Indian Tourism: Potential Unexplored

B Kanishwarya

India has vast potential for tourism industry, thanks to her geographical diversity. It is estimated that India can attract 100 million tourists per annum. However, this potential is not prudently and efficiently explored by India, though Indian Government is at present running a campaign titled Explore India Millennium Year. India has to inform the world more about the nation.

On the face of it, Explore India campaign seems fine. However, this is not adequately supported by a focused strategy. Take for instance the poor road, rail and air facilities in the country; and poor environment around our monuments. Thus, it is prudent to retain the existing customers and satisfy them rather than creating new products and customers. A marketing effort to market India as a tourist destination will yield fruitful results only if the infrastructure is in proper place. Thus, the present efforts by India looks like an effort of a salesman rather than a professional marketing expert.

Tourism in India has to be viewed from two angles. One from the point of view of overseas tourists. Only these tourists bring foreign exchange to India, at a macro level. Next, considering the nature of India, even travelers within India has to be encouraged, since this helps to gain national integration and more employment opportunities at rural levels. For promoting both national and international travelers, there has to be a high level of co-ordination between centre as well as state tourism departments. They can jointly promote tourism. Gujarat Tourism Department is in the right direction by which it has already tied up with Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir and Kerala.

Information flow also plays a vital role in tourism development, especially with international tourists. The general image of India itself is like I thought they were mostly poor people and had no idea that there were so many interesting things to see, according to Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand High Commissioner for Delhi in the eighties. Apart from creating a free flow of information on India and its image, it calls for a web-linked strategy. There are many Indian tourism web sites on the web. However, there can be found no complete Indian portal on tourism. The Cental Government can have an integrated tourism effort based on the web, since leisure is pre-planned in overseas. And an integrated web strategy is a must to attract foreigners. A foreigner should be able to plan his complete tour schedule through web inclusive of his accommodation to payments. Just releasing press advertisements alone will not yield results, since press advertisements have very little life compared to netvertising.

Further, India has over 20 world heritage spots and none can be found in UNESCOs world heritage city list. Even smaller countries such as Sri Lanka and Nepal find a place in this list. Africa has 15 world heritage cities compared to India and against Indias tally of zero. India, Indian Government or its tourism department made no effort at all over the years to have even one of them declared a world heritage city by UNESCO. Thus, this is a clear vindication of the fact that India lacks an integrated communication-cum-strategy with respect to tourism industry.

The Millennium Gala may be a great opportunity, which India can exploit, if India can prudently draw and execute an integrated strategy involving state governments, infrastructure, private players and internet. The government should take the responsibility at a macro level and leave the micro promotions to the private and state players, since there is a huge potential at each pockets of India. Most of the Indian states have realised tourism potential and they are executing their own campaigns. However, at the moment we find Indian efforts with respect to tourism are adhoc without any focus compared to other countries.