Niche is life
Incredible India is in top gear to pursue niche opportunities in addition to harnessing its rich heritage, culture and nature. K Chiranjeevi, the Honourable Minister for Tourism, while announcing a path-breaking shift in its marketing focus in new promotional campaigns, also made it clear that Incredible India will go full throttle on promoting niche products like adventure, sports, eco, golf, pilgrimage and wellness to name a few.
India offers wide range of experiences like no other destination. It has now also envisaged garnering at least one per cent of international arrivals, which is soon going to touch the one billion mark. Niche products are capable of creating incremental demand for destination India in addition to its conventional cultural, heritage, historic and nature-based travel attractions.
A representative of the Buddhist Heritage Tourism Promotion Council projects that out of over 600 million Buddhists in the world, 150 million people are practicing and are willing to travel to witnesss Buddhist heritage. As per their rough estimates, India can very well attract 1 per cent or 1.5 million visitors annually by launching a dedicated global promotional campaign on its Buddhist heritage. Similarly, other niche segments can greatly stimulate the collective incremental demand.
There is a growing interest in visiting destination India, which is evident from the response to its Visa-on-Arrival scheme. As per the recent statistics released by the Ministry of Tourism, during the period January- October 2012, a total number of 12,273 Visa-on-Arrivals (VoAs) were issued as compared to 9,739 VoAs during the corresponding period of 2011, registering a growth of 26 per cent. Last month, a total number of 1,457 VoAs were issued under VoA Scheme as compared to 1,234 VoAs during October 2011 registering a positive growth of 18.1 per cent.
To top that, there is a subtle wave of optimism and courage in the travel trade. They seem more confident of growing even with the prevalent challenges. It’s the right time that both the private and public sectors explore synergies to reach the 10 million international visitor’s mark.