Kerala Tourism Model -The God’s own country’s Marketing Case study

Hello everyone,

Today im gonna talk about the Kerala tourism model

Tourism is one of the most neglected industries in India what’s more disappointing is that

India is one of the most beautiful countries in the world with the most invaluable assets that

very few countries have we have dense and large green forests one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world

we do not have the disadvantage of extreme climatic conditions like Canada and

most importantly regardless of which month of the year it is India always has a wonderful destination to serve the tourists

we have the sun of Katch and goa for winter and spring Manali for summer Mahabaleshwar for monsoon and

countless other destinations for not just seasons but every single month of the year

the best part is that our greatest asset is not a super tall building or an amusement park

it lies in the natural ecosystem which cannot be built regardless of how much money you have

for example, you can build a Burj khalifa with 1.5 billion dollars but you cannot build a 5000-year forest with a beautiful climate right?

but even then if you look at the numbers even Hong kong

a country that is smaller than Delhi had 55 million foreign tourists in 2019

whereas India which is 2000 times bigger than hong kong had only 17.9 million foreign tourists

you know what guys the small state of Kerala has been doing an incredible job with its tourism project and

in the past 20 years, the foreign tourist arrival in Kerala has shot up by 378 per cent

going from just 209000 and 2000 to over a million arrivals in 2019 and at the same time the earnings of the state from

the foreign exchange has shorter from just 416 crores to 10 000 271 crores from 1999 to 2019

this turned Kerala from an unknown place into a world-famous destination

in 2000 the national geographic society declared Kerala as one of the top 10 paradises in India

the world travel tourism council chose Kerala as a partner state

it even got named as one of the top 10 hot spots for the millennium by the mi rights magazine

the question is how did Kerala become such a popular place for tourism?

how did the Kerala government achieve this exponential revenue growth?

most importantly what are the lessons that we need to learn from this iconic strategy

the back story

this is a story that days the back to early 1990s India back then,

the Finance minister Manmohan Singh just opened up the economy because of which we had evaded an economic crisis by a whisker

so just like today money is flooding into the startup ecosystem of India back then since India was the biggest market after china

several companies rushed to India to set up their hubs in the wake of Globalization

as a result, we saw the entry of giant foreign companies like coca-cola Hyundai and Nokia this is how several industries started flourishing

the Indian middle class started to have more disposable income to spend but like I said before despite having wonderful destinations

India as a country was not even close to being featured as the world’s top tourist.

Destination and the image of India was almost like modern-day Bangladesh a fast-growing developing nation but not so good for Tourism

this is where ladies and gentlemen the Kerala tourism development corporation took this matter very very seriously

and they executed a marvellous project that did not just turn the outline into an iconic destination

but changed the very outlook of tourism in India

This strategy was so successful that in the next 10 years the foreign tourist traffic shot up by 200 % the domestic tourist traffic shot up by 450%

Kerala began to be featured among the top 10 destinations in the world

the question is what was so special about this strategy that it turned Kerala into a world-famous destination

Brand re call value

the first pillar of this strategy was the marketing campaign to increase the brand recall value of Kerala

for those who don’t know brand recall value is the percentage of individuals

who can recollect your brand when a product or a service is mentioned

for example, when do I say a burger

what is the first brand that comes to your mind ? when I say hair oil what is the first brand that comes to your mind?

if you thought about McDonald’s burger or parachute hair oil

it clearly states that these brands have a high recall value


now in the case of tourism creating a brand recall value is a little tricky

because most of the customers you are appealing to have never visited your destination and

yet you have to carefully curate your marketing campaign in such a way that

when someone thinks about travelling to a particular place your destination by default must be the obvious choice

so the tourism team of Kerala picked three of the most unique and powerful attributes of Kerala that are nature Ayurveda and culture

god’s country campaign

they came out with a beautiful campaign called the god’s country campaign and

just like the name implies the campaign portrayed Kerala beautifully in billboards and videos all across the world

for national publicity, they collaborated with Indian hotels to spread the message about Kerala all across the country,

and within some time Kerala achieved the brand recall value with its association with nature

furthermore because of its beautiful natural ecosystem.

Kerala ended up owning the title of god’s own country now

on the outside, for some people, this might not sound like a big deal

but I got to tell you guys that this entire campaign was not executed by a marketing agency like Ogilvy and Martha who had world-class consultants

but by the government officials of Kerala who worked on a very tight budget and

most importantly this was done during a time when there was no digital marketing no social media and no easy access to the internet.

this meant that the government officials had to figure out which countries to target without google analytics

they had to get an ad spent for billboards by talking to hundreds of people from across the world

they had to negotiate these with hundreds of vendors from across the world and

then they had to strategically place their billboards in completely unknown countries just hoping to get a good return on investment

in short, this entire process required an insane amount of vision strategy dedication and patience

to get through the government bureaucracy and execute something so incredible and

the result turned out to be absolutely worth it

The foreign tourist traffic shot up by almost 200 % going from just 69 000 visitors to 2.1 lakh visitors in 2000

the domestic tourist traffic shot up by 428% going from just 9 48 091 to 5 million visitors in 2000

now another astonishing thing to be noted over here is that

if you look at the numbers of increasing visitors and the income generated by the state

you will see that although the number of foreign visitors increased by only 200 per cent

the earnings of the state skyrocketed by 1700 going from just 28.2 crores to 525 crores from 1991 to 2000

Avenues of income

so the question over here is how is there such a stark difference in the increase in traffic in the earnings

well this is what brings me to the second pillar of Kerala tourism

building avenues of income by the ease of business the reason why this was important

was that even if a lot of people came to Kerala the state cannot just generate revenue simply by the number of visitors they have

to get people to spend on things so that they can generate revenue through taxes collected from those businesses

whereas in Kerala you got a wildlife century to visit

you can spend on boat rides

you can live in a boathouse

you can go for tea tasting

you can live in a treehouse

take a spice tour

to indulge in Ayurveda sessions which is extremely popular and well marketed

and then spend on your stay and food so if you see these are all high ticket avenues that were built by the local businesses in Kerala now this again required very heavy expenditures and

policy changes and guess what they started to roll out lucrative subsidies to promote business in Kerala and

they actively took up the task of improving wayside facilities board terminals and jetties

apart from that, they built a great waste disposal system for the backwaters to make sure that the waters are clean and Picturistic.

this was followed by improving other basic infrastructure projects like roads and wayside facilities

all of these projects were executed to achieve a return on investment for the state in the next 10 to 20 years

this was the long-term thinking that the government officials had for the state of Kerala and this is clearly reflected in the numbers

if you look at the numbers of hotels in 1990 there were only 565 hotels that started in Kerala but

in the next 10 years, this number doubled to 1222 and kept doubling for the next 10 years

again similarly the number of restaurants opened in Kerala was only 1098 from 1986 to 1991

but this number shorter by almost 200 to 311 restaurants between 96 to 2000

and it again rose by 200%to 8467 from 2006 to 2010 and more

just like this,

every other business from Ayurveda to boat riding started flourishing in Kerala to create new avenues of business

this is a reason why tourism started flourishing in Kerala as more and more businesses started operating

in fact, in a stand that I saw from the department of tourism of Kerala because of the increase in the number of hotels and marketing,

there was a sudden increase of 219 in domestic tourists in 1995 which then kept growing even further

this is the reason why the income generated by tourism in Kerala is shorter by 1700% in spite of the foreign visitors increasing by only 200%

Corporate Approch

then comes the last pillar of Kerala’s massive growth and that is the evolution of the project with time now people

I don’t know if you realize this but then one of the biggest reasons

why corporate companies function way better than government bodies

is because of the changing leadership of the entities

when there is a CEO change the intent of the new CEO is usually to follow the footsteps of the former leader and

make the organization even better this is what leads to constructive development

but in the government,

it’s about how to demolish everything that the former leader has built

so that I can claim credit for the initiatives this is what leads to destructive development.

but surprisingly in spite of the government constantly transitioning between the congress and the communist party of India

the tourism of Kerala has always been progressive and the development has hardly ever slowed down

this is clearly evident in the progressive steps that they’ve taken with time just like a corporate does

for example

the tourism department found out that India was not considered to be a safe place

thieves often used to steal luggage and they used to loot the tourists

so as soon as the Kerala tourism department understood this problem

they came up with an innovative comprehensive insurance package for tourists in association with united India insurance limited

this scheme compensated tourists for any accidents occurring during the period of their stay

if they stayed in any one of the KTDC 6 premium properties for a minimum of 3 nights

apart from that various schemes such as

the personal accident scheme

medical expense

baggage cover scheme and even a loss of passport scheme was introduced

just so that the tourists feel secure about their trip to Kerala

the second example of the strategic evolution of their marketing campaign can also be seen from their youtube channel

I was shocked to see that Kerala tourism already started posting on youtube in 2009 itself now they have 244000 subscribers

time and again they give the god’s own country campaign a fresh outlook to keep up with the trend and

to maintain Kerala’s brand recall value

in fact, as soon as the pandemic started fading away Kerala heavily spent on youtube content creation

because of which their top two videos have already crossed seven million views each

now they are posting one content every single day

this is the reason why people from all across the world flock to Kerala

and undoubtedly the government of Kerala has done an incredible job
with the sheer capitalistic approach to establish a world-class benchmark for
others to follow

now this brings me to the most important part that is as entrepreneurs and future leaders of this country

what are the lessons that we need to learn from Kerala’s tourism case study

lessons

moving on there are three lessons that we need to learn from the iconic case study of Kerala

number one

it doesn’t matter how good your product or service is unless you know how to spread the word about it

in this case, as I said on paper India has so many destinations for tourism that the tourism industry should have been a perennial source of income for India

unlike Kerala, we do not have a capitalistic approach towards tourism because of which we are losing millions of dollars in revenue with each passing year

and small businesses that could have generated a ton of money at tourist destinations are still making only a fraction of what they could have made

If we had foreign visitors

number two

in tourism marketing is only half a job done what you have to do further is build a solid backend system to generate revenue and

to extract the most out of your assets in this case the government of Kerala was proactive enough to build a sustainable ecosystem for businesses

because of which they saw a drastic increase in their revenue eventually generating more taxes and

number three

if you’re a government body you can either treat your people as voters or as customers

if you treat them as voters you will care about their votes and then you’ll about bureaucracy

but if you choose to treat them as your customers you will use your massive power and resources to eventually earn both their taxes and their votes


this my dear friends is what we call conscious and strategic capitalism at its best

in this case, it was the proactiveness of the Kerala government to introduce
insurance schemes to invest hundreds of crores into fixing the jetties to
fixing the waste disposable system and lastly their ability to stay ahead of
the curve with modern tools like youtube and social media marketing

all of these things made Kerala a god,s own country in tourism