Editorial

Tourism Needs Professional Promotion
Tourism is all about promotion, which in today’s information-age translates as advertisements. Without promotion in the right places, conveying the right message, tourism potential will remain but a tantalising prospect of the boom that could have been. Of course word of mouth plays a role in promoting a destination and flawless services go a long way in establishing tourism credentials, but for these factors to kick in, one needs the right promotion. More tourists land in Malaysia than the flights bring into India.
We obviously offer a much more varied experience, and yet, even Tiny Malaysia beats us with the “truly Asia” slogan [of much older vintage than the incredible India tag line]. Tourism is booming in Malaysia, and if anything, the destination’s increasing popularity has triggered even more aggressive advertising across all mediums of information, from television channels to websites to newspapers to magazines. They have obviously recognised the importance of promotion. Promotion and planning has however been consistently ignored by Sikkim, most noticeable so in the tourism sector. When was the last time you saw a slick spot on TV, or a captivating spread in a magazine or newspaper tempting a prospective audience with a holiday in Sikkim? The State is lucky that enough people are smitten by the land and its people to keep arrivals high, save the hiccup of the post-Earthquake collapse. Tourism has grown in the State despite a shoddy and extremely unprofessional approach to promotion. But now, given the bad-press [as a natural disaster prone State] received in the wake of the earthquake and the fact that there is no dearth of destinations in India, the need to come up with a clear, professional and sincere promotional campaign is being urgently felt. The State Government has announced ambitious plans to increase tourist arrivals to 6 lakh by 2015. An increasing number of Sikkimese are investing in the hospitality industry, a huge number converting residential buildings into hotels, and as per a recent communiqué from the Tourism & Aviation Department, at least two 5-star mega-projects are on the anvil as well. The number of destinations has not increased by much in the recent past, so one is essentially looking at selling the same points. What this means is that repeat-visitors will soon start tiring out and to ensure that businesses do not fail and the target numbers are achieved, Sikkim will need to promote itself much better, much more.
A positive sign towards this commitment arrived recently after a meeting between departmental officials and tourism stakeholders of the State. Recognising the need to project a more positive and vibrant recall for Sikkim to counter the disinclination among prospective visitors to holiday in Sikkim that the earthquake devastation has infused, the meeting resolved to host a Sikkim Snow Fest in Jan-Feb 2012. Tourist festivals are not new to Sikkim any more. Too many of them have been held in the past decade or so and with exception, almost all have been poorly promoted. Now, most of the still surviving festivals have become token affairs and the rest have folded up; not because they were poorly hosted, but because they were so lackadaisically promoted that they never delivered on the promise to introduce a new event or excite tourist interest in a new destination. Of course, there were other factors also which contributed to the failures, but poor promotion was definitely one of the leading causes. The Sikkim Snow Fest, thus, has a lot of case studies to learn from and ensure that it does not repeat those mistakes. It has already lost substantial lead time for promotion. It is not clear whether a clear plan has been mapped out yet to advertise the event and it is almost certain that neither an established advertising agency, nor a professional event management group has been commissioned to work on the project. In all probability, all of this is being in-house, with the responsibilities shared by the department and the tourism stakeholders. There is still time to amend this incongruity because the department and the stakeholders should concentrate on their strengths, i.e. bankrolling the event and hosting guests respectively, and bring in established professionals to package the event and work the promotion magic. This Fest has the potential to become really big by cashing in on the obvious goodwill Sikkim enjoys and by projecting itself as an event which will announce the resuscitation of tourism in Sikkim. If showcased in the right places and promoted with the right message, there will be many across the world who will want to be here when the Fest is underway, as much to support Sikkim as to celebrate its resilience. And then, it will have to be ensured that their time here is well spent and not reduced to experiencing the tokenism which has marred many past Tourist Festivals…