G-booting India Tourism
Harrison Ford, playing the role of the American President in ‘Air Force One’, in a cockpit scene is handcuffed behind, bleeding, sweating and angry that his member of staff was shot dead. The plane’s hijackers now have his family sitting in close range to a gun. Many others are held hostage across the plane, and the 747 jumbo is speeding towards an unfriendly territory.
Ford’s character appears immobile, but his sharp eyes tell that he’s at work - a broken piece of glass is being used to cut the strong tape that tied his hands. He is busy working on the tape even as the terrorists are threatening to kill more people. Just as tension peaks, the ‘President’ manages to cut through the tape, free his hands, and waiting for the right moment, pounces on one of the terrorists and instantly, things reverse. The plane’s control is taken back, terrorists are eliminated one by one, members of staff are back to communicating with ground control, and ultimately landing safe (that’s what heroes are to do)!
India’s international inbound tourism landscape is in a similar unfriendly territory now. Handcuffed by multiple tightly wrapped bands - covid-induced travel deferments, high airfares, visa issues (now being resolved), Russia’s attack on Ukraine and its impact, poor desirability as a result. Importantly, India has not created any compelling reason to attract a traveller - absence of marketing campaigns.
It is at a time like this that India’s G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant promises to breathe fresh air into hopes of thousands of stakeholders and participants in tourism in India - a sector that has been ignored to fight its own battles for some time now.
Domestic Tourism
677 million Indians travelled across India in 2021. If the 2022 numbers covering the domestic festive season is anything to go by, we are headed towards a certain betterment.
Consider this - while a staggering 9,60,000 domestic aircraft movements were recorded across India’s airports in 2019, each day from 2-9 December 2022 alone recorded above 400,000 passenger movements. 11th December 2022 has seen 427,000+ passenger movements, more than pre-Covid levels. There are 131 operational airports in India today. New airports are being commissioned, new terminals built and capacities added.
A recent PayU Insights report showed a 165% increase in Indian travel spend during the festive season of 2022. Airlines saw a 95% increase in average ticket size and a 70% increase in expenditure in holiday packages. Much of these spends were using Credit Cards!
Such strong domestic performance or rebound, or “revenge travel” as it is commonly called has encouraged tourism players in India to nudge in the direction of being dismissive about the international inbound segment. Ill informed members of public have opined on several social media discussions that “we don’t want them, we can do without them”, when the difficulties in obtaining India visas in the UK were flagged. Vice President of India Shri. Jagdeep Dhankar exhorted Indian travellers to first explore domestic destinations before venturing outside the country. Shri Dhankar added that “tourism is a key driver of economic growth and employment generation in India”.
India’s Inbound Tourism
Over the years India with such a profusion of regions and destinations, a variety of landscapes and diverse experiences, a range of cultural and gastronomy tourism opportunities, has been shamefully behind in attracting international tourists. Compared to tiny Thailand’s 40 Million international tourist arrivals bringing in $91 Billion, India paled with just 10.93 Million who brought in $30 Billion! (It is another matter that we do not know for sure how many of the 10.93 Million were actual tourists (leisure / business) or from the VFR segment). Remember, we even celebrated breaking the 10 Million threshold.
(A perspective comparison between India/Thailand in 2019: India had 102,911 accommodation establishments providing 25,42,240 rooms where as Thailand had 20,293 establishments providing 7,84,118 rooms - Source: UNWTO Dashboard)
Even as many tourism operators have had a great domestic season, one must understand that reputation of destinations (even domestically) are often driven by the way international attention is attracted. A popular foreign travel magazine, tourist guide book, portal or blogger recommending a tiny village can enthuse domestic interest also.
Countries that naturally attract large volumes of travellers have over the past many months been running advertising and marketing campaigns. Ads in print and digital mediums, outdoors, travel trade networking meets, familiarisation tours etc. Compelling messages are being given out.
It is unfortunately difficult to put your finger on a worthwhile campaign or campaign effort from India’s tourism administration. Certain states like Kerala (as usual), Madhya Pradesh and the like have run some campaigns. Odisha, Jharkhand etc have launched policies and have made a song and dance about it. Trade associations have requested government attention to teething issues threatening seamless operations.
PR @ Work
Social media platforms and travel trade magazines are awash with status posts, pictures and reports of multiple tourism destinations conducting a string of travel trade and media interactions in key source markets across the world. India is seeing a number of international destinations doing contact programs with travel trade partners to push travel to those countries. Contrast this with the Indian participation at international trade fairs - one does not know why CII is part of the India Tourism pavilion at a tourism trade fair! At a recent fair, country pavilions of smaller countries like Maldives and Rwanda had 2X the number of private stakeholders than the India India Tourism pavilion.
Many international destinations have managed to figure in the list of top destination listings for 2023. In how many of these has a destination or experience from India found a place? Hardly one here, or another there. Much smaller countries like Ghana, Tanzania, Albania, regions like Nova Scotia in Canada, cities like Kuala Lumpur made it to multiple lists from the giants of travel decision influencers (CNN Travel, T+L, Forbes, Lonely Planet, NGT etc.) Such is the profusion of travel destinations that more than just listing a country or region, they are listing them according to experience categories. Still, a breathtaking destination like India fails to appear in many of these lists. What do we ascribe it to?
In this background, the statement from Amitabh Kant is both familiarly clear and significant. A clearsighted approach has been completely absent from India’s tourism establishment - we’ve forgotten how these lines sounded! All we heard otherwise was: “we will position India as a ‘major’ tourist destination”. Whatever ‘major’ means! One news headline screamed in joy: “Incredible India back a full circle”.
The 2023 Opportunity
The World Travel Market Industry Report for 2023 reveals:
38% people look for authentic/unique/once-in-a-lifetime experiences
19% people are looking at luxury experiences
Of course, these are European holiday trends, but can India not get into the consideration list of these people? We can, provided we make ourselves visible, attractive and send out compelling messages.
India has a few good opportunities in 2023 to reclaim some messaging power. The G-20 Presidency and a whopping 200 events across the country is a massive opportunity to create an attention-grabbing PR campaign and send a message across the world - India is safe, equipped and ready to host the world.
Odisha hosting the Hockey World Cup is another. A wonderful opportunity to popularise underrated and unknown destinations.
The men’s Cricket World Cup bang in the middle of our traditional inbound season is well timed - November/December.
The huge opportunity coupled with easing the visa bottleneck particularly for British nationals must be embraced and grabbed with both hands by the states, trade associations, and everyone in the value chain.
Put our best foot forward in receiving travellers, extend warm handshakes.
De-clutter airports and staff-up to speed processes (the Minister for Civil Aviation swift visit of Delhi’s T3 in response to complaints about long waiting hours is a robust message of responsiveness)
Train and re-train staff, guides, officials; get them ready to roll out our traditional hospitality
Instil insight among hotels and tour operators to work together rather than play undercut; and promote destinations, and not just the property or a package.
This should be a re-booting process of the international inbound segment of our $173Bn industry (as on 2021 - this was $247 Bn in 2018!). It will create and safeguard jobs, generate dollar revenues, increase our exposure and create a right environment for a proper take-off thrust for 2024 onwards (when international tourism is widely expected to get near pre-covid levels). It’s easier said than done.
International inbound tourism is a ‘bear’ necessity.
It brings in much needed dollars into our economy
As travellers come from different countries, even if there is a dip from one particular country, it can be compensated from other countries
Bookings are normally done much more in advance than the domestic segment, allowing players in the industry advantages of confirmation / cash flow etc.
People down the value chain are likely to be tipped by foreign travellers so that benefits trickle down the economy and increases domestic spending
It’s not that there aren’t challenges. Even as travel spending has gone up, there have been multiple challenges thrown back at the desire to travel, like the dreaded war in Ukraine and the looming Damocles’ sword of an economic recession - the second in less than 15 years.
The Macro Opportunity
G-20 is the metaphorical piece of glass that is available to free Indian tourism from the shackles and get back into the thick of international inbound travel. India can contribute a much larger share of Asia Pacific’s share in global tourism arrivals and revenues.
We are large enough to host much more than 10 and 15 Million (target for 2024) international travellers.
We have nearly a dozen globally well-connected entry ports (airports) where the world’s best airlines arrive and depart.
We have much more to offer than sun and sand.
We have more than a dozen large Convention and Exhibition Centres.
We are warm and hospitable.
Let’s G-boot!