Thiruvananthapuram: Such was God’s Own Country’s association with ‘adult’ films that even as recent as 2014, a search for Kerala on Google used to throw up porn bits in the top 20 search results. Realizing that the skin show could harm the tourism potential of the state in the age of social media, the Tourism Department had launched a carpet bombing of sorts on YouTube way back in 2012. Tourism videos, finally, have finally replaced porn films in the top search results for Kerala.
For the last four years, the Tourism Department has been swamping YouTube with quintessential Kerala videos, from daily vignettes and scenic beauty to festivals and cuisine. By now, over 5000 professionally produced videos have been uploaded. In the last year alone the videos together have notched up over two crore video views. “Since Kerala was keen on having only discerning travelers, this association with porn was a dampener,” said a top tourism official. Besides porn, other image-battering videos related to garbage and stray dog menace too got top billing.
The carpet bombing worked because of an inherent YouTube handicap. “YouTube’s search engine, unlike Google’s, cannot throw up the best results for a search. Its algorithm depends on unreliable parameters like quantity, comments and ratings,” said Hari of Invis Multimedia. The Tourism Department, by flooding its videos in YouTube, virtually tricked the website to giving its videos greater preference. “Since all our videos were professionally made, travel agents and even academicians began accessing them. It also helped that Kerala Tourism has a working arrangement with YouTube,” the tourism official said.
Tourism meet to discuss on live streaming potentials
As Snapchat and Instagram posts are taking off phenomenally in the West as innovative tools for live interface, Kerala is planning to use its own live streaming technology to tap tourists' experiential accounts of the destinations they visit. Considering its potential for tourism promotion in India, a group of young professionals from Kerala, with the support of state's Tourism Department, is all set to explore live streaming as a major campaign tool for the upcoming second edition of International Conference on Tourism Technology (ICTT) in Kochi. Association of Tourism Trade Organisation (ATTOI), with the support of Kerala Tourism, will organise the three-day event at the Le Meridien Hotel in Kochi from June 8 to 10.
"Technology has become an essential part of tourism industry. Unlike other social media tools, we have noticed that the live feeds are getting more traction. It is intimate, engaging, bespoke and authentic than any other form of tourism destination promotions," said ATTOI president Anish Kumar P.K. In December last year, ATTOI, as a curtain raiser to an international conference, organised a live streaming of an underwater engagement to showcase beach resorts as a unique offering of Kerala Tourism.
Over 25 lakh viewers across the world watched the video that was streamed live from the beach resort of Kovalam. ICTT 2017 aims at helping the tourism industry players to stay abreast with the latest technology through effective usage of the digital platform. Around 500 delegates, comprising tour operators, hoteliers, resort owners, home stays, SEO companies, software firms, social media marketing companies and bloggers, are slated to attend the conference.
