The Hindu Business Line : ‘Domestic focus helped offset slowdown effect’

A concerted effort to market Kerala to domestic tourists has helped the State’s tourism industry cope with the effects of the global economic slowdown, said the State Home and Tourism Minister, Mr Kodiyeri Balakrishnan.

Initiatives such as ‘Dream Season’, ‘Visit Kerala 2009’ and ‘Jet2Kerala’ have helped bring more domestic tourists to the State over the past few months, he said, while launching Login.Kerala, a bouquet of Net-based services from Kerala Tourism.

The services being launched under Login.Kerala are in keeping with the demands from the tech-savvy tourist, he pointed out. These services will also help transform the Kerala Tourism Web site ( www.keralatourism.org) from being just a source of information into a transaction platform, he added.

Bouquet of services

Login.Kerala offers a bunch of Net-based services for both tourists and the travel trade. For tourists, it offers online hotel bookings at destinations across the State, a blog aggregator called Your Voice, a mobile WAP site, a Kerala Tourism channel on video sharing Web site YouTube and free downloads of various Kerala Tourism brochures.

For the travel industry, it now offers online submission of the mandatory C form that a hotel has to file with the police providing various details of foreigners who have checked into the hotel.

The services being launched through Login.Kerala will help create more opportunities for the State’s tourism products and experiences, said Dr V. Venu, Secretary, Tourism, Government of Kerala.

Taking note of the concerns of tour operators that online hotel reservations offered through the Kerala Tourism Web site could impact their business, he pointed out that the facility is intended primarily for smaller stakeholders. The online booking facility is intended to enable small hotels and homestays, that do not have sufficient resources, obtain better access to the market, he added.