Industry Information

Tourism New Zealand Activity

The 100% Pure New Zealand campaign launched in India for the first time in February of this year. Online banner advertising and nation-wide television advertising saw visits to www.newzealand.com soar from just over 3,000 to 13,270 within one week.

Tourism New Zealand celebrated five years of operations in India in July. Around 180 trade and media attended functions in New Delhi and Mumbai.

In trade activity, Tourism New Zealand and Cathay Pacific hosted nine agents on a self drive Insight familiarisation trip to the South Island visiting Southern Lakes, Nelson and the Abel Tasman. Seventy-five sub-agents of Kesari Tours, a key partner for Tourism New Zealand were trained on New Zealand regions and self drive in mid-July.

Competitors for New Zealand

According to travel trade projections, most Indian outbound traffic was heading to the US over summer. The number of Indians who have booked themselves on organised tours to the US has gone up by 40 per cent compared to last year.

Finland Tourism has significantly increased investment in India and plans to introduce a ‘Finland Specialist’ programme in India, since the commencement of the Mumbai-Helsinki route.

The German National Tourist office is launching an India gateway to their website soon. Germany recorded a growth of 33 per cent in Indian arrivals for the first four months of 2008.

The tourist offices of Portugal and Spain recently announced a renewed commitment for their successful co-op programme, promoting both countries as a single destination, ‘PortugalSpainBoth’ (www.portugalspainboth.com)

Tourism Queensland ran its fourth road show in India in 2007, covering Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Bangalore. The main focus was on the honeymoon and family holiday sectors. Indian tourists to Australia are expected to grow at an average annual rate of 17 per cent each year by 2016, according to The Tourism Forecasting Council. In 2007, Australia welcomed 94,000 Indian visitors.

Tourism Ireland recently launched its ad campaign in India. The campaign reflects the beautiful scenery, warmth of the people and the living and historic culture of the island nation.

Doing Business in India

India is a developing country. It is also the world’s second most populous country and largest democracy.

Indians are generally very religious people and can appear morally quite conservative. Indians may often be vegetarians on religious/caste grounds. Most Hindus do not eat beef because of their reverence for the cow, and Muslims do not eat pork.

The consumption of alcohol is also forbidden in some parts of India, and drinking patterns are quite restrained. Dinner is usually served late at functions held in private homes and will usually conclude the evening.

There were 60 million internet users in India in November 2007 (5.5% of the population), up from 2 million in 2000. (source: Internet World Stats)