In pursuit of the travelling Indian
Australia, Mauritius focus on experiential branding, look to leverage growing wanderlust among the young and affluent
For years, Bollywood has been the best brand ambassador for Swiss Tourism in India, with several hundreds heaving themselves up the snowy Alps every year, just for a glimpse of the spots that their stars cavorted in, in their movies. Now Tourism Australia is hoping to emulate the model, using prime time soaps on Indian television to inveigle its way into the burgeoning Indian travel market. It has stitched up alliances with Star TV, Balaji Telefilms among others to present the country as a series of adventures in food, sport and leisure and at the same is pushing fares down for the deal-hungry Indian traveller. Mauritius, on the other hand, is pitching its locales as wedding destinations and luxurious getaways. Both countries have trained their sights on the band of outbound tourists from India, growing at 25 per cent a year and pegged to rise to 50 million by 2020 according to the UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organisation).
Nishant Kashikar, country manager, India & Gulf, Tourism Australia, said India is one of the fastest growing economies and home to a growing community of tourists to Australia. He sees the maximum growth coming from the professional class that is eager to explore new places and experiment with their vacations.
“We are focusing on midage affluents, as their average spend is high,” says Kashikar. The Mauritius Tourism Promotion Authority (MTPA) is targeting a similar band of travellers and for them, India presents a strategic opportunity to de-risk the country’s over- dependence on European travelers. Kevin Ramkaloan, director of MTPA said that India is an important market in that context. Targeting aspirational travellers For Tourism Australia, the key focus has been pushing the country as an aspirational destination, one that the stars go holidaying to. The company worked with Star Plus for 10 episodes of one of its popular shows Ye Hai Mohabbatein and with Balaji Telefilms for several of its shows. The officials also worked with Indian food influencers, given the huge popularity of shows such as Masterchef Australia in the country. “Sustained outreach to the target audience by means of national and regional General Entertainment Channels (GECs) has been an integral part of our strategy,” says Kashikar. This has helped the number of Indian tourists to Australia to grow in the double digits since 2014.
Bringing fares down and offering all-in-one deals have helped too. But when it comes to advertising the destinations, the focus is increasingly on digital media. “Today 50 per cent of the advertisement budget goes towards digital,” says Kashikar.
In July 2012, Australian Tourism set a target for 300,000 tourists from India by 2020. Kashikar says they will hit the target in the first quarter of 2018. And from being the ninth largest (in numbers) and eighth (in spending) source of tourists to Australia, he expects to push the country up to fifth position in a couple of years. Till June 2017, tourist arrivals from India rose by 15 per cent to 2.67 lakh, as compared to the previous year and Indian tourists contributed $1.03 billion to the local economy. Kashikar is targeting an 18 per cent growth in these numbers by 2020.
Focusing on leisure, special occasions
For Mauritius, India presents an opportunity to expand the size of its business. Tourism is the mainstay of the island economy and overdependence on Europe that contributes around 10 per cent of the tourist arrivals is being seen as a business risk.
Like Tourism Australia, MTPA is focusing on the affluent segment. “We are targeting the luxury travel segment from the Indian market as over 90 per cent of hotel and resort brands in Mauritius are in the 5-star and 4-star categories. We are not a mass tourist destination,” says Ramkaloan.
However, having studied the pattern of travel from India, Mauritius is being pitched as more than just a beach destination. MTPA is also promoting Mauritius as a place for adventure tourism and as a place that is culturally close to the country. To that end it has planned special events around Diwali, Bollywood awards extravaganzas and is working towards being a part of big Bollywood productions.
Mauritius clocked an 8 per cent growth in arrivals with 48,000 Indian travellers till June this year. MTPA wants to take the number to 90,000 by the end of this year and 100,000 by the end of 2018. Ramkaloan says that the country is targeting luxury as well as the wedding travel segment. Last year, Mauritius was the venue for 15 grand Indian weddings.
“Though Tier-I cities of India have been the best performing markets for us, but we are also focusing our efforts towards Tier-II markets,” he added.
Over the past few years, the Indian traveller’s penchant for foreign destinations has grown manifold, not just in the big cities. And for the tourism authorities of both countries, it seems too good a chance to miss, as they scramble to position their countries as ideal destinations for the Indian tourist.