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I
t was an unbelievably complex and intricateexercise. To bring a country as large as India — with 28 states, nine union territories, 18official languages and 1.12 billion peoplespread over 3.29 million sq km of breath-taking geography and history — together under therealm of tourism by a simple branding exercise wasa challenging task,” says Amitabh Kant, one of themain architects of the
Incredible India 
campaign. Acampaign that helped India metamorphose into oneof the top destinations of the world, a fact thatwas acknowledged even by
Conde Nast Traveller 
Readers’ Award that ranked the country as theworld’s most preferred holiday destination in 2007.Kant, courtesy his experience as a joint secretaryin the Ministry of Tourism between 2001 and 2007,has now penned the fascinating success story in hisbook,
Branding India: An Incredible Story 
. In fact, hefeels the book is more relevant today as the Indiantourism industry faces a slowdown again due to theeconomic meltdown and the 26/11 Mumbai terrorattacks. “The tourist inflow during the first threemonths of 2009 has seen a decline of around 18 percent as compared to the same period last year. ButI feel tourism is an antidote to terrorism; it is acatalyst for employment creation, income redistri-bution and poverty alleviation. In fact, one of the
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namaskaar
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idea pool
A brand is
what a
brand does
More and more Indian statesneed to emerge as tourismdestinations and that can bedone by enhancing the quality ofexperience at the ground level,improving their infrastructureand creating new sub-brands,saysAMITABHKANT
 
best ways to fight terrorists is to support travel andtourism,” says Kant. He recalls the speech the thenIndian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had givenat a chief ministers’ conference on tourism after the9/11 attack in the US: “Tourism is a foe of terrorism.Whereas terrorism feeds on intolerance, tourismbreeds tolerance and empathy. Terrorism has norespect for human life. In contrast, tourism teachesto savour and celebrate all that is beautiful in natureand human life. Terrorism seeks to erect walls ofhatred between faiths and communities. Tourismbreaks such barriers. Terrorism detests pluralismwhereas tourism celebrates it.”Posted, at present, as principal secretary andspecial commissioner (industries), Kerala, Kant feelsoptimistic that the tourism industry will bounce backas it did post 9/11. “Tourism has a unique capacityto adapt and survive. It has constantly demonstratedits extraordinary resistance and ability to overcomecrises. The
Incredible India 
campaign emerged fromthe crisis that confronted Indian tourism in 2001-02.The 2008 terror attack requires another cohesive,
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namaskaar
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concerted response,” he says, adding the need ofthe hour is for more and more states to emerge astourism destinations by enhancing the quality ofexperience at the ground level, by improving theirinfrastructure and creating new sub-brands.As tourism is a multi-sectoral activity, says Kant,it requires intervention from every possible govern-ment sphere — infrastructure, urban development,health, culture, railways, shipping, rural develop-ment, environment and forests, civil aviation, roadsand highways, home affairs — as it did during the
Incredible India 
campaign. “To achieve a synergy,however minimal, among these departments andmove ahead without making too many compro-mises was a huge task. That it was accomplishedwas, of course, thanks to colleagues in the govern-ment and the private sector, who battled all oddsfor the cause of Indian tourism,” he says. Now overto him:
Cris
 
is as a c
 
atalyst:T
 
he making of abrand c
 
alle
 
d Inc
 
re
 
dible India
A crisis of massive magnitude had gripped Indiantourism in 2001-02. The year 2002 had seen adecline of six per cent in tourist arrivals and threeper cent in foreign exchange earnings in US $ termsas compared to 2001, which itself had witnesseda fall of 4.2 per cent in arrivals and 7.6 per cent inforeign exchange earnings over 2000. Hotels inIndia had gone down by 25-30 per cent occupancy,international tour operators had removed Indiafrom their sales brochures and inbound Indiantour operators had, on account of lack of business,switched to outbound operations. This was aconsequence of several disastrous events, oneafter another — the attack on the World TradeCentre in New York, the war in Afghanistan,the Parliament attack in Delhi, the troop mobilisationat the Indian border and travel advisories leadingto withdrawal of schedules by airlines fromIndia.For India, this was a time for reflection. Itwas a moment for action. The need of the hourwas a strong national policy for tourism. The needwas to acknowledge tourism’s potential forrevenue and employment generation. The
Incredible India 
campaign was launched at the peak of thiscrisis to bring back consumer demand, generatemomentum and enhance growth in the tourismsector.
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idea pool
Clark, a leading travel writer, woke me upfrantically at 1 am a week before Christmas in2001. He was just a week away from checkinginto the Coconut Lagoon in Kumarakom for atwo-week holiday in Kerala but there were notickets available for India from London. Allflights were choc-a-bloc. Sounding a bitsheepish, he asked if I could talk to thechairman of Air India and swing two tickets forhim. I was now wide awake. Though a few tour operators at the World Travel Market inLondon had cribbed to me about insufficientflights just about a month ago, I had no ideathat it was so difficult to get seats to India fromthe UK. I assured him that I would try my level best — and I did — but Clark ended uptravelling five days after his scheduled departuredate. Just eight years down the line, things havechanged dramatically, with even private Indiancarriers flying into Heathrow. For years, India’sgrowth in the tourism sector was severely retarded by the civil aviation sector. India is along-haul destination for most of the key andemerging source markets and almost 97.2 per
Air transport — pilotingthe growth of tourism
of 00

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tourindia

I am waiting to get my hands on the book unfortunately not available in trivandrum . Knowing Amitab for many years I am sure it will be worth every ruppee Babu Varghese tourindia

reply06 / 12 / 2009
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