Beating last year’s devastating flood situation, the Southern state of India – Kerala has seen an impressive 6.82 per cent growth in its tourism sector, in the first quarter of the on-going year. In comparison to the previous year, the increase in tourist arrivals has energized the state to attract more tourists, be it foreign or domestic, even in more numbers.
During first three months of this year, the total number of tourist arrivals (both domestic and foreign) was 46,12,937 as compared to 43,18,406 during the same period of the previous year.
The domestic tourist arrival in particular, has seen an increase of 8.07 per cent. Such hike, especially in Ernakulam, Alappuzha and Idukki — the districts that suffered the brunt of floods that ravaged a large part of Kerala in August-September last year — is clearly indicating that the state’s tourism has overcome the calamity completely from January 2019 onwards.
According to the state’s Tourism Minister Mr Kadakampally Surendran, “Last year’s floods were unprecedented in fury and devastation and it battered large swathes of the state, affecting its infrastructure that had a bearing on the tourism sector. Whipping the apprehension that Kerala’s tourism would take a long time to recover, we are able to put things back in their places with effective action plans to win back the confidence of tourists.”
The state government is not only concerned for the recovery of the sector, but it is also taking necessary steps to improve it further. For which it launches several champaigns to allure more tourists this monsoon. On this
Mr P. Bala Kiran, Director, Kerala Tourism said,“By combining the magic of rains, wellness tourism, especially Ayurveda treatments, and backwaters, we have launched the ‘Dream Season’ campaign, this May, to woo travellers during the monsoon. Its result will be seen in the second quarter of 2019.”
Kerala Tourism is also planning to attract international tourists to God’s Own Country. As part of this, the department participated in a Tourism Fair in West Asia last month to attract tourists from West Asia.In addition, the State Tourism Department is planning to bring bloggers from Gulf countries as part of ‘Destination Kerala’ programme to cover Splash, the monsoon carnival in Wayanad.
Again, Kerala Tourism is planning to organize programmes like Nehru Trophy Boat Race, Nishagandhi Music Festival, special bloggers ride etc to attract more travellers this year.
Recently, the State Tourism’s latest campaign “Human by Nature” was displayed at Times Square in New York as well. According to reports, the campaign has received 1.5 million impressions on a daily basis so far. The advertisement is one more step to attract more foreign footfalls to its own soil.
