Indian Tourism can weather the current tourism slump due to the advantage India enjoys as far as affordable packages suiting all segments and all budgets is concerned," said Gour Kanjilal, regional director, India Tourism, Dubai.
"Its global reach through its non-resident Indians makes it very much a round-the-year destination. The economic and political climate not withstanding, India continues to enjoy a preferential position with Arab holidaymakers because of its proximity, air connectivity, centuries old commercial links, affordable packages and economic investments etc. Through our public relations we will continue to explain the particular situation or circumstances clearly to the trade, media consumers so that confusions surrounding any specific event can be clarified. This helps in better understanding and acceptance. Our PR efforts have been a great help in creating confidence when there were series of rumours about riots in Gujarat, Indo-Pak war threats, advisories from USA, UK etc and various other events during the year 2002," added Kanjilal. "If you want to know about our new strategies for 2003, we will continue with our aggressive media campaign [both print and electronic media] but with new focus and specific target markets. Our eye will be on attracting top end tourists and all our efforts will be to place before them our luxury hotels, luxury trains, luxury spa resorts, top end boutiques for exclusive shopping, rejuvenation packages at Ayurveda Resorts, cool Hill Resorts in the Himalayas, Golf Tourism, Palace Hotels - all that represent quality products to meet the demand of the upmarket clients. "India is high value tourist product destination and is the right choice for rich Arabs. This will be thrust in those campaigns. This is mainly to motivate those rich Arabs in the Gulf who had been earlier going to USA or Europe for holidays but are now a bit nervous to visit these destinations."