Tourism ministry to spend Rs20 crore on online advertising

The ministry of tourism has set aside a budget of Rs20 crore for online advertising as tourism minister Renuka Chowdhury is convinced that the internet is the best way to reach out to the international audience.

The ministry's Incdredible India website, incredibleindia.org, has a daily average traffic of around 10 lakh visitors a day, with the ministry continuously innovating the tools on the site. 

The campaign has leveraged all aspects of the internet with display advertising Search advertising, Search engine optimisation, tapping audiences of popular video sharing sites etc.

The ministry's Incredible India-campaign media plan includes print and electronic media advertising, as well as below-the-line activities such as road shows.

The international campaign will revolve around the idea of having "one reason" to visit India in 2009. The Ministry has also coined a new punch-line "Your search ends here" as part of its aggressive campaign. The focus of the campaign is to present a 'resolute India', its intrinsic values, exuberance of youth, team work etc.

"The idea behind launching the new campaign is that tourists should find a connection with India, so that they desire to visit the country," said a ministry official. The campaign is being rolled out in thye US, Canada, Latin America, United Kingdom, Western Europe and Scandinavia, Russia, China, Korea, South East Asia and Australia.

The ministry has tied up with hotels, airlines and tour agencies to offer 'one' complimentary day as part of the tourists' stay the hotel, or 'one' complimentary flight ticket, based on the 'one' reason campaign. The online campaign will focus on the concept of 'Atithi Devo Bhava' (the guest is God), welcoming tourists to India.

Crayons Advertising has bagged the creative duties for the tourism ministry's long running Incredible India online account.

The agency will be looking after the online campaign for the brand for the domestic as well as the international markets. Ignitee, a digital agency, will assist the agency in executing the campaign.

The first creative of the campaign has a powerful gaze of a Bengal tiger with a caption, a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, "I want all cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But, I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."

Another creative with an unusual image of Taj Mahal talks of experiencing tranquility when the world is seeking answers to the high pressures of life. The comprehensive online campaign will be rolled out covering major portals across the leading tourism generation markets for India. The objective of the campaign has been to build an awareness about the richness of India and position India as a favored tourist destination for foreign and domestic tourists.

To give a 360 degree approach to the publicity efforts the campaign theme on the internet has revolved around capturing the theme "Colours of India".

Meanwhile, the ministry of tourism has sanctioned nine mega projects at Amritsar, Bhubaneswar-Puri-Chilikha, Tirupati, Dwarka, Hampi, Gangtok, Kadapa, Mahabalipuram and Ganga Heritage Cruise circuits to promote tourism..

The projects are a mix of culture, heritage, spiritualism and eco-tourism in order to give visitors a holistic perspective. Incidentally, the ministry's website www.incredibleindia.org was adjudged as the winner of the PC World Web Award 2008 in the tourism category for best design. The evaluation was based on parameters like content, structure and technology to arrive at the winners.

The list was filtered on basis of preliminary evaluation of the sites to arrive at the final set of websites that were given to the 14-member jury comprising domain experts in the field of design, UL, security and technology.

The government's tourism website was also awarded the "Golden Palm" award at the 10th National Conference on E-governance for being the 'best government website' by the department of administrative reforms and public grievances", awarded by the centrral government and the department of information technology,in 2007. There are about 100.1 million website operating in the World Wide Web as on March 2008 and the Ministry of Tourism website was ranked 25000 in April 2008.

The site, initially commissioned in English, later had a Hindi, French, Korean, Japanese  and Chinese versions.