Taiwan Tourism to launch online destination campaign in India market starting July 2019

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Taiwan Tourism Bureau (TTB) will be shifting gears for destination promotion and marketing campaigns in India to more online channels now from outdoors campaigns which they were doing since announcing their ambitious ‘2 20:20’ strategy towards the end of 2018. According to Trust HJ Lin, Director, Taiwan Tourism Bureau (Singapore office), the online campaign is likely to be rolled out from July this year. 

As part of their outreach, Taiwan Tourism Bureau conducted three city roadshow in Delhi, Kolkata and Hyderabad to reach out to the trade fraternity with their India market Representative, Elan.

According to Lin, Taiwan Tourism Board has started talking to leading Outbound Travel Agents viz – MakeMyTrip to launch the online campaign and hopeful of starting the campaign from July. He said that prospective online media for the campaign will be finalized soon. He said that in a market like India where the destination awareness is low and people generally search destinations on online channels like OTAs, it is important to have targeted campaigns on online distribution channels to generate awareness as well convert that into actual visitations.

Talking about visas, Lin added that Taiwan has one of the easiest visa systems which goes a long way in prospective travellers decision-making discretion. By working closely with OTAs and online media such messages can be easily communicated and conveyed to travellers. Travellers who have a valid US, Schengen, Japan, Australian, Korean Visa, are eligible for a free e-Visa in Taiwan.

Lin informed that the TTB will continue to work with traditional agents in the way they have been working so far. There has been  an encouraging  41% growth of  visitor arrivals from India this quarter as compared to the same period last year. Lin said that since festivals are a major draw with Indian travellers, Taiwan Tourism will also launch campaigns around key festivals like Food and Hot Spring Festival as well this year. He said that approximately 40% of the Indian visitations are for business. Taiwan provide direct incentives/subsidies for Incentive groups. He said that they are keen to see more leisure traffic from India to Taiwan. The strategy behind the 2 20:20, is to lure 2% of the hi-end leisure traffic from India to Taiwan to attain 20% growth in Indian inbound to Taiwan by 2020.

He said that although the Indian share in the total inbound of Taiwan is too small (40,000 in 2018), it is one of the fastest growing market (9.8% in 2018). Taiwan has increased their marketing budget for India from USD 1,02 million to USD 2.0 million in 2019.