Chennai: Tourism has emerged as one of the revenue generating industries, but
unfortunately the country’s presence on the social media has not added much to its success story in luring more international visitors, it appears.
Of the foreign nationals visiting India, only 42.50 per cent said they sometimes got opportunity to know about India as a tourist destination through social media.
Whilst 23.60 per cent “mostly” got the opportunity to know about India through social media, 89.30 per cent of the respondents had tried to “explore more information” related to India through social media for tourism purposes, as per the final report 2016 – 17 commissioned by the Union Tourism Ministry on “social media as an influencer among foreign tourists visiting India” and submitted by the Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel Management, recently.
A total of 2,351 foreign tourists (including those visiting Chennai and Kanyakumari in TN) were surveyed and of them 42.50 persons expressed they “sometimes got the opportunity to know about India as a tourist destination through social media.” This indicated that there is a need to enhance the presence of India as a tourist destination on social media platforms so that this percentage would be increased in the coming years.
About 89.30 per cent respondents had tried to explore more information related to India through social media for tourism purposes, so that they could plan their trips to India.
This percentage is huge and indicates the curiosity among online explorers to know more technicalities related to either know or finalise their trips to India.
About 44.54 per cent respondents explored tourist attractions through social media, which is higher than 31.88 per cent respondents who had explored the accommodation option through social media. This indicated the need to make available appropriate information on the social media networks to boost this percentage in threefold or even higher.
