THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala Tourism has set a record of sorts by winning the National Tourism award for its website for the fifth time in the last ten years. The honour has come at a time when Kerala Tourism has announced that it would roll out a new set of user-friendly mobile-based applications very soon.
Tourism Minister A P Anilkumar received the prestigious award in the category of Most Innovative Use of IT/Best Website and Portal, instituted by the Union Ministry of Tourism, from President Pratibha Devisingh Patil at a ceremony held in New Delhi the other day. ‘’It underlines our constant efforts to innovate on the latest technology in this high-tech era so that we stay atop among the most favoured destinations of the country,’’ the Minister said. The award-winning website (www.keralatourism.org) has been designed and produced by Thiruvananthapuram-based Invis Multimedia.
The Ministry of Tourism presents the annual National Tourism Awards to various segments of the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. Since the inception of the awards in 2001, Kerala has now won it for a record fifth time.
"Kerala, as in many cases, was the pioneer in capitalising on the IT boom to market its tourism products and reach out to the travellers across the globe. This award once again acknowledges our attempts and commendable success,’’ said Kerala Tourism secretary T K Manoj Kumar, who was also present at the award ceremony.
“Kerala Tourism website that won the award is virtually an online encyclopedia on Kerala, with focus on travel-oriented content. It receives around 1.75 lakh visitors and 7-8 lakh page views every month. Rich with text and high quality photographs, the website is currently available in English, Hindi, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Arabic and Chinese, besides the Malayalam version,’’ he said.
Several international search engines have ranked www.keralatourism.org as the first site for information on Kerala since 2003. The monthly e-newsletter of Kerala Tourism reaches around 85,000 subscribers worldwide. http://twitter.com/keralatourism, the official page of Kerala Tourism on Twitter has 8,400 followers.