With a view to attract more tourists, the government today called upon the stakeholders of tourism to reach out to new and potential source markets.
"While continuing the thrust in our traditional source markets, it is also necessary to reach out to new and potential source markets to broad base our visitor profile and augment tourist arrival from all countries, Tourism minister Kumari Selja said while inaugurating the overseas marketing meet here.
"We should target all those countries from where the growth in tourist arrivals has been encouraging," she added.
As an initiative in this direction, tourism ministry in collaboration with Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) India Chapter will be organizing a series of roadshows in Scandinavian countries covering Finland, Stockholm and Norway this month.
Emphasising on capacity building for all professionals in the tourism industry, she said there is need for professional training programme for officials involved in the sector to give it a new dimension.
There will be a three-day training programme for 20 tourism ministry officials involved in 14 overseas marketing offices across the globe.
"The training will be conducted by IIT, Delhi and I am sure it will be a very beneficial in giving a new perspective on promotion and marketing to our officers," she said.
Admitting a decline of 9.3 per cent between January and June this year in foreign tourist arrivals, Selja said the ministry has taken a number of steps to promoting India as a tourist destination.
"There were road shows in many important overseas markets including USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and Dubai and outdoor advertising campaigns have been launched in all important cities worldwide," she said.
As a result of these sustained efforts the downward trend in tourist arrivals has shown improvement and in June this year, for the first time in the last 8 months, there was a positive growth of 0.2 per cent.
Ministry is also organizing a series of promotional events in Russia with the Experience India Society and ICCR in September to showcase Indian destinations.
"We are organizing a road show in Dubai in October focusing on tremendous health care system available in the country," she said adding "there will be adventure tourism road shows in Australia and New Zealand."
Tourism ministry also asked overseas offices to promote rural tourism sites which will also benefit local community economically.
