RP eyes Indian travel market

CEBU, Philippines – As one of the fastest growing economies of the world, India is now considered as another growth market that Philippine tourism stakeholders should put focus on.

According to Glen A. Agustin, team head for the Department of Tourism’s initiative to entice the Indian market, Indian arrivals as of the year 2007 has been composed mostly 41.5 percent of business and 16.6 percent holiday travellers while a majority are composed 41 percent of ages 35 to 44 years old and 34. 8 percent of ages 25 to 34 years old.

“The Indian market is the sixth in growth rate and ranks as the 15th highest foreign visitor arrival in the market share for 2008. There are a lot of business opportunities for India considering it has over a billion population and that it is estimated as the fourth largest industrialized nations in the world,” said Agustin.

He said that in its over a billion population, about 350 million to 450 million Indians can travel and majority are middle class income earners who have average daily spending of around 85.42 US dollars per day.

He also said that in terms of wealth, Indian millionaires grew 20.5 percent annually according to the World Wealth report of 2007 and that over 100, 000 Indians has declared income of over one million US dollars.

However, in terms of enticing them as tourists, Agustin said that there is still so much for the Philippine to do and still so much to consider.

One of these considerations is on food because Indian travellers do not usually experiment on food and a lot of them have strict dietary requirements and peculiar tastes.

“A large number of Indians are vegetarians and most have dietary restrictions in cooking dishes so the best approach for hotels, resorts and restaurants to deal with Indians is to know the peculiarities in their food preferences,” said Agustin.

He said that hotels, resorts and restaurants have to work with travel agents and tour operators to put together a travel package that will suit the Indian market.

Agustin said that right now DOT with the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has made progress in the Immigration requirements of Indians tourists through the VISA-upon-arrival facility which is deemed to encourage tour operators to bring in more Indian tourists in the country.

He said that the department will continue to strengthen their efforts in enticing the Indian market and they will continue to do campaigns that will aide them in penetrating this big market.

“The Philippines can offer a variety of tourism-related services and products to the Indian market and we can do much better than our other Asian neighbor,” said Agustin.

Meanwhile, Anoop Kanuga, the director for Indian travel agency Bathija Travels Private Limited said that outbound travellers from India expand 10 percent annually and the volume is expected to increase to around 20 million in 2020.

He said that with this positive growth, there is a huge potential in tapping into their outbound travel market.

However, Kanuga said that Indian tourists usually prefer “experiential trips” because as travellers, they want to be exposed to a country’s culture, cuisine as well as they usually look into specific details.

And since Indians are information savvy and are updated with the current products and innovation, he advised the country’s tourism stakeholders to look at providing them with only the best tourism products.

“Value is important for Indians than price. The fastest growing niche segments include business, leisure, honeymooners, luxury tourism as well as the meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE) market so travel and tour operators must look at providing the specific needs of these segments,” said Kanuga.

He said that there is “tremendous” potential for an increased collaboration between the Philippines and India but the way to achieve this is for the Philippines to further improve its mechanisms in growing the market through programs like faster processing of VISA-upon-arrival, offering more child and family-centric tour packages as well as adding more direct flights from India to the country.