Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a campaign to involve overseas Indians in promoting tourism in the country after inaugurating a slew of tourism-related projects during his Srinagar visit on Thursday.
The Chalo India Global Diaspora Campaign has been launched based on the call of the Prime Minister, wherein he requested the Indian diaspora members to encourage at least five non-Indian friends to travel to India.
The campaign is a formalisation of the PM’s call on several occasions to pitch for NRIs and overseas Indians to bring in their friends and associates to visit India and contribute to building brand India as a tourism destination.
Aashish Gupta, Consultant CEO, FAITH said, “The simultaneous launch of destination development projects under ‘Swadesh’ and ‘challenge’ mode and the launch of marketing calls to both global and domestic citizens under ‘Chalo India’ and ‘Dekho Apna Desh’ campaigns will be a positive development for tourism in India. Happening in Srinagar, at the start of the summer season will also bode well for their local tourism economy. The industry looks forward to an integrated global tourism marketing campaign in key source markets aligned to ‘Chalo India’.”
Rajiv Mehra, President, IATO said, “Anything that is done to promote tourism we wholeheartedly welcome it. However, the reality is that we need to do strong marketing in the foreign destinations to get tourists to visit India. It is fallacious to believe that one NRI visiting India would draw in six more tourists from that country. We need to rope in Destination Management Companies, foreign tour operators and get them to market us.”
A portal will be launched for the NRIs to register, along with the contact details, and details of the people they are nominating, who can be reached out directly by the Tourism Ministry with specific publicity material.
