Evaluation Of Tourism Marketing In Indian Environment

EVALUATION OF TOURISM MARKETING IN INDIAN ENVIRONMENT

Dr.S.Yuvaraj

Lecturer in Commerce

University of Madras

The marketing principles facilitate a breakthrough in the tourist system. It helps the tourist organizations in establishing an effective communication system with actual and potential tourists. This makes it easier to know the likes and dislikes or the taste and preferences which make the possible conditioning of the supply position in tune with the changing demand position.

It was in the early 1950s that the Government of India decided to promote tourism but it had no clear objectives in terms of marketing. However, the development took place since in most of the European countries, the tourist dollar earned from the Americans helped in re-building their war-torn economies. At the early stage, the image problem was at peak which obstructed the normal flow of development. It is important to quote that in the entire western world, India had the image of an exotic country. The English projected this image just for their own benefits, conveniences and comforts. The projection of a new image could be possible after the end of the decade 1950s. For the projection of a new image, a good number of overseas offices were opened in some selected countries like USA, UK, West Germany, France and Australia. Essentially, the overseas offices were meant just for transmitting information.

The first task in this context was to project a new image and the overseas tourist offices with the co-operation of local experts acted in the direction of innovating the promotional strategies. The image of India was projected as a land of Himalayas, the Ajanta-Ellora, the Taj Mahal, the Mahabalipuram etc. Here, it is important to mention that during this period, the cultural tourism relating to monuments and Indian civilization attracted the world tourism, specially from the western world.

The beginning of the decade 1970s, opened new avenues for the development of marketing concept in the tourism industry. But by that time, the magnitude of competition was found at peak. Moreover the tourist organizations could not project image of India as a holiday country. It was in 1970 that the capacity of Indian Airlines was increased since Boeing 737s were included in the Indian Airlines and some world class hotels were opened. The sophistication in the communication facilities could also be found by mid of the decade 1970s. Thus, it is right to mention that during 1970s, a number of steps were taken to project a new image of India but so far as the intra-regional movements of tourists is concerned, there could not be some impressive developments. In addition, the aggressive selling was not found in the advertisement campaigns. The decade 1970s was a beginning of tourism marketing in India but keeping in view the qualitative improvements around the world, the developments inside India were not up to mark.

The beginning of the decade 1980s paved ways for the development of tourism industry. The management experts realized that if the contribution to the world tourism is to be increased, the solution is to streamline the marketing strategies. This necessitated launching of a National Image Building and Marketing Plan in key markets by pooling resources of the various public and private agencies instead of independent and disjoined efforts undertaken by these organizations to project a better image of the country which would yield abundant fall out for tourism growth and also be of advantage to trade and commerce. The product development required development of nontraditional areas such as trekking, winter sports, wildlife tourism and beach resort tourism to exploit the tourism resources of the Himalayas, the vast coastline with sandy beaches and abundant sunshine and wildlife to attract more tourists and to lengthen their period of stay in the country. The exploration of new tourists generating markets particularly in the Middle-East, South-East and East Asian countries having a broad spectrum of cultural affinity with India and encouragement of ethnic tourism by launching a programme of Discover Your Roots and vigorous marketing of conference and convention traffic could be possible during 1980s.

Diversification of tourism to India from the traditional sight-seeing to the more rapidly growing holiday tourism market within the framework of the country’s milieu is need of the hour. This requires concerted efforts to make possible a basic change in the product development strategy vis-Ð" -vis the innovative promotional efforts instrumental in projecting the image of India as a holiday country.

The beginning of the decade 1990s opened new areas for the development of tourism industry and the marketers are now expected to play a vital role. It was felt that in this context, the aggressive marketing should be preferred to raise the tourist arrivals. Here, it was significant that world tourism gets an intensive care so that the foreign exchange requirements of the country are fulfilled to a substantial extent. This necessitated development of infrastructural facilities like transportation, accommodation and communication. Thus,