Incredible India moves in on the Europeans

With a burgeoning footfall of European tourists — especially from countries like Spain, Russia and Italy — the ministry of tourism, under the revamped Incredible India programme, has devised a new campaign to attract more from these countries over others like US, UK, France, Germany and Canada, where tourist footfall is traditionally high.

A senior tourism ministry official said that numbers from the Bureau of Immigration had pointed to a healthy growth of tourists from certain countries. "We have worked on campaigns to attract more tourists in these countries, including print campaigns and TV ads. Since both the mediums are expensive, we are also working on aggressive marketing campaigns on social media," said the official, adding that the campaign will be carried out by the ministry's Frankfurt office.

The official added that the Indian embassies in these countries have been roped in and tour operators in their country will be incentivised as well.

According to data from the ministry of tourism, the percentage of Russians, whose inflow had seen a steep dip of 36.1 per cent in 2014-15, saw a whopping increase of over 32.1 per cent in 2015-16. Tourists from Spain, which saw a dip of 1.2 per cent in 2014-15, rose by 16.2 per cent in 2015-16. The percentage of Italian tourists, which fell by 3.8 per cent in 2014-15, rose in 2015-16 by over 8.6 per cent.