KOCHI: As the state’s tourism sector tries fervently to restore its pre-Covid status and leap from there, a lack of enough outstation visitors remains the main cause for worry, with experts calling to rework the strategy.
“Only around 20% are from outside the state. Only they come ready to spend money, something the industry is in dire need of,” said an official.Things are picking up, albeit very slowly. “The number of domestic tourists who reached the state from January to June is 89.9 lakh. It was 27.6 lakh in 2021 and 89.64 lakh in 2019,” he said.
The official said a new trend had emerged during Covid. “A new segment called local domestic tourists has emerged. They don’t contribute to any increase in the GDP. They have been known to have a lack of etiquette when it comes to keeping the destinations clean,” said the official. “Malayali needs to change his travel habits. The theme of this year’s World Tourism Day is ‘rethinking tourism’. There is a need to move towards sustainable tourism. The very motto of World Tourism Organisation is towards smarter, safer and cleaner tourism,” he said. When it comes to promoting tourism, the state needs to go in for an aggressive marketing mode,” said the official.
“The strategy that it had developed before Covid will no longer work. We might have to begin from the scratch,” said the official. Kerala Travel Mart president Baby Mathew said: “To tide over the disconnect caused by Covid during three years, every country has devised an aggressive strategy to market its destinations. It’s something Kerala, too, needs to do.”
“We have to keep telling people that ‘Hey we are here, We are open,” he said. To achieve that, Mathew said, two things need to happen simultaneously. “One is destination marketing and the other is product marketing. More importance needs to be given to social media marketing. For this, the state government needs to pump in funds to create a platform that will have information accessible to everyone all over the world,” said Baby.
When it comes to Kerala, even if the inflow of foreign tourists is low, the arrival of domestic visitors from other states can keep the industry afloat, he said. “However, much needs to be done. There is a need for a multi-pronged approach. Not just Business to Business, but also Business to Customer promotions have to be carried out,” added Baby.