Aiming to boost the slackening tourist inflow from South Africa, India has sought advice from travel agencies and media on how to attract more people to diverse attractions in the country.
Indian High Commissioner to South Africa Ruchi Ghanashyam engaged the local travel agencies and media houses to seek advice on how the tourism could be improved.
Despite India having such diverse attractions to tourists all-year round, the country is not getting the number of tourists that it could from South Africa, Ghanashyam said at an event here.
The efforts of the Government of India Tourism Office (GOITO) in reaching out to Indians in African countries are misguided, Ashish Sharma, Regional Director for Southern Africa of Satguru Travels which has offices in 42 countries, said.
Sharma said GOITO should be targeting non-Indian tourists and not concentrate their advertising and marketing efforts on Indian satellite TV channels beaming into South Africa and the local Indian media.
"We don't need to know about India much. That's one of your drawbacks, so most of your marketing is going in the wrong direction," he said.
Welcoming the news that India is now going to have visa on arrival facilities for 150 countries at major airports, Sharma cautioned about not creating the wrong impression by having arriving tourists queue for a long time to get these visas.
Reacting to Sharma's comment that it was important to assure tourists, especially women, of their safety while in India, Ghanashyam conceded that there were challenges.
"But then there are challenges of this nature that are bigger in other parts of the world," Ghanashyam said as she blamed media for highlighting only isolated incidents of bad news.
"That creates a bad image for India, yes, I accept that. But in terms of safety and security, Johannesburg doesn't have the best of reputations either, but there are still a substantial number of tourists coming to South Africa. So why should it become an issue for India and not South Africa?" said John Friel, Etihad Regional Business Development Manager.
