| Wednesday, July 22, 2009, 15:30 Hrs [IST] | South Africa Tourism: Adopting a 360-degree communication mix for India | From hosting the much talked about Indian Premiere League 2009 to the upcoming FIFA World Cup in 2010, South Africa has become the hot spot for global events and tourism. South Africa Tourism, which started operations in Indian market in 2005 has come a long way in creating awareness about the destination. Krupa Vora charts out the multiple strategies adopted by the tourism board in order to hard sell the destination in India | |
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In 2005, when South African Tourism first set up its office in India, the key strategy was to define the potential audience and reach out to them with the help of targeted marketing tools in order to create awareness and excitement about South Africa as a destination. A smart combination of promotions, advertising and other media-related activities enabled the key audience to be sufficiently motivated and the response received by the tourism board was tremendous. Initially, the tourism board conducted extensive research to understand the existing and potential outbound traveler base, travel patterns, likes and dislikes, spending habits, preferred times of travel during the year, among other things. This activity helped the tourism board to gain insights into an audience that it was starting to communicate with.
While conducting the study, it was learnt that the spending power was concentrated in the top eight cities of India – the four metros (Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata) along with Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune. While the markets were identified, the tourism board also narrowed down the potential for leisure travel |