Third time’s a charm? Or is it a case of reality bites? Whichever way, the Modi government has finally decided to reboot the ‘Incredible India’ campaign, after seeing the country’s tourism arrival at an abysmal low since Covid.
“Context has changed, what worked earlier will not work now,” quipped Suman Billa, additional secretary at the ministry of tourism at a travel event in the capital Friday evening, and added, “In the coming years we are going to see a new Incredible India…which will be more social and digital media centred.”
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The major reboot of the iconic campaign is slated for the next fiscal year and expected to continue onward, with the tourism ministry having already started working on the contours of the new strategy. New in the mix will be a major leveraging of artificial intelligence, high-value destination content and significant industry partnerships to expand India’s global tourism footprint.
“We have to be nimble to go where the opportunity is,” Billa said.
The new move, aimed at refreshing and strengthening the India tourism brand comes after years of neglect of the lucrative inbound tourism market, meaning international travellers coming into the country. Budget for the ‘Incredible India’ initiatives were slashed continuously for several years, which led to diminishing presence of India at international travel fairs and the shutting down of many overseas tourism offices.
This had a particularly acute effect after Covid when revenge travel became and people of the world started travelling all over, to leisure and recreational destinations ranging from western Europe to the beach destinations of South East Asia. However, India’s mix of palaces, forts and culture (not to mention its cumbersome visa and other administrative processes) suddenly found out of step in a world increasingly determined by social media trends, digital algorithms and the travellers whose inclinations seemed to have undergone a sea change after the pandemic.
So much so that India’s pre-Covid tourist arrival figures of around 1.09 crore is by many estimates yet to be matched, six years later. This, when even neighbourhood cities like Dubai or Bangkok pull in way more than the total for the whole of India.
Incredible India was first launched in 2002 as a grand multimedia initiative to push India as a tourist destination on the world stage, from its post-liberalisation exhilaration and as an ancient culture ready to welcome guests in the new millennium. The valuable visibility it offered, with a continuing tourism ad campaign, presence at international travel marts and active engagement of travel agents across the planet, established India as a tourist destination maybe not at the top, but one that had brand recognition and recall value.
However, over the past decade or so, the authorities consciously decreased the focus on ‘Incredible India’ in favour of domestic spiritual tourism. In 2017, after years of neglect, Incredible India 2.0 was launched, but it was half-hearted at best, soon being shelved by 2019. The question now is whether in a world where travel is up there on the list but is a world away from the conservative concepts Indian bureaucracy works with, whether India can rise up the desirability sweepstakes?