India Tourism helped change India’s perception among foreign tourists

> airfare. The number, obviously, is much higher now. And, as many as 40-50% Australian tourists in India are repeat travellers, Dhar adds.

All that income comes with very little investment. “For every $100 earned through tourism, the expense was only $7 at the time. It’s such a high return on investment. Tell me which other industry can claim that,” Dhar says.

Tourism is also very favourable in terms of employment generation and has a multiplier effect on many sectors of economic activity. “Therefore, tourism helps the society, by and large, in a better, faster and more distributed way than most sectors,” he explains.

There have, of course, been financial benefits in Australia stemming from the increased interest about India. “Effective promotion of India in the Australian market has increased the number of tour operators, travel agents and Indian hoteliers specialising in tours to India,” Hor says. “Many of them have expressed concern that the closure of India Tourism office will impact their India business due to absence of day-to-day contact.”

Dhar also fears that the move could have an adverse impact, especially in the medium and long term. Tourism is an extremely competitive business now. Every country is vying for the tourist dollar because investments are low and returns are high. “Therefore, you have to be visible all the time in people’s perception. Someone also needs to be in touch with tour operators, persuading them, cajoling them, inviting them to seminars and travel shows so that the India product is on the top of their minds while they’re selling it. Now, if there is laxity on that front, in fourfive years, we may see adverse effects of the closure of the tourist office,” he says.

On the other hand, those who support the decision say that in today’s internet age, tourists have all the information they need at their fingertips. Sure enough, walk-in enquiries at tourism offices would have reduced. Dhar admits this as well.

“The tricks of the trade have changed in the age of digital and social media,” he says, but adds that any country that’s serious about tourism has an office in Australia. Anybody who is serious about tourism understands that you need visibility overseas, he says.

Hor adds, “Most of the other South East Asian countries where Australians travel regularly - Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Japan and China - have offices in Australia to cater to the local market. India as a tourist destination competes with them and the industry feels that closure of the office will push back India in the competition.”

Insiders say that while PM Narendra Modi has talked about the importance of tourism, there aren’t enough people to talk about tourism down the line. There are strong lobbies for exporters in Delhi, but since the tourism industry is so fragmented, it doesn’t have a big clout, so it can’t influence decisions, he adds.

“Inbound tourism has to be seen as an export because we earn in dollar terms. The tourist comes to your country, eats food, drinks tea and liquor, buys clothes, travels in taxis and airplanes, basically injecting money directly into your economy,” Dhar says.

While India Tourism’s presence in Sydney helped generate just such tourist revenue for India, it is not just about dollars and cents. Tourism doesn’t work in isolation. What India Tourism did was help change popular perception about India. This was brought about by the people-to-people contact that has been generated through tourism.

And it was this perception that helped India Tourism’s Sydney office craft a memorable - or should we use the word ‘unforgettable’ - publicity campaign.

Dhar recalls that the precursor to the massively popular Incredible

India ads was the ‘Unforgettable India’ campaign that was developed and launched for the Australia and New Zealand markets. “In the mid-1990s, we tried to find out what the impression of India was,” Dhar says. India Tourism spoke to the travel industry, regular tourists and conducted focus groups. At the end of the study, a couple of things became clear. The expectations of people were very low when they went to India and they experienced was a big culture shock. But gradually, they developed a love for India’s sights and sounds, its monuments, lakes, rivers and temples. They had never seen anything like it in Australia. “We asked what their final impression of India was. They said that most people love it, some hate it, but that it was definitely unforgettable. On the basis of that, we developed a campaign ‘Unforgettable India.’ It was very successful and turned out to be the mother campaign for the hugely popular ‘Incredible India’,” he says.

In fact, so successful was the ‘Unforgettable India’ campaign, that some time after it, an ad agency in Australia wanted to use word ‘unforgettable’ in the tag-line for a product. “But the client refused it, saying that it would be confused with Unforgettable India,” Dhar says. And to think that all this never would have happened - or happened differentlyif the Indian Government had had its way almost three decades ago.

The year was 1990. It was the preliberalisation India economy. The country was facing a severe foreign exchange crunch. In a remedial measure, the then government decided to shut operations of all but one of the close to 25 Tea Board of India overseas offices and five India Tourism offices. Sydney was one of them. There was a lot of buzz about India among Australian tourists at the time. Many on-the-ground initiatives of India Tourism were shaping up well and delivering results. Ending it abruptly would have meant seeing all that hard work go down the drain.

202,000*

293,625

(* Figures rounded off. Source: tourism.gov.in)

Dhar says he approached the Indian government authorities in New Delhi, explaining how the Indian government might save foreign exchange by closing the overseas offices, but also how the offices were also helping generate foreign exchange. “We gave them statistics to show how the Australian tourist spend was generating hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says.

Just like this time, there was a lot of outrage even in Australia among tour operators and travel agents. “Even the government of the day wrote to India, saying that they would love to see the India Tourism office stay back,” Dhar says.

All the efforts and lobbying resulted in the decision being reversed. Of the five India Tourism offices that were to shut, only Sydney remained. “Thankfully, the government realised the importance of having a presence here,” he says, adding that even this time, although the full office in winding up, he dearly hopes that there is some kind of representation of India

Tourism outside of the consulate where they could perform some basic duties such as giving information, keeping stock of promotional literature and so on.

Asked if the Indian consulate would do anything in this regard, consul Chandru Appar says, “We have been encouraging and undertaking activities in this regard, individually as well as in collaboration with various organisations and institutions including India Tourism. Our efforts in this regard will continue.”