KOCHI:
Ways to attract Chinese travellers to Kerala will gain special focus at the upcoming International Conference on Tourism Technology (ICTT) that rolls out lessons on use of digital and social media platforms in the industry.
The third edition of ICTT is being organised in this commercial city of the state on September 26 and 27 by the Association of Tourism Trade Organisations, India (ATTOI) in collaboration with the Kerala government’s Department of Tourism. The summit, whose final day overlaps with the World Tourism Day, will feature 500 delegates and a separate session on wooing the Chinese to India, especially God’s Own Country, according to organisers.
The two-day event seeks to bring various stakeholders of travel and tourism on to a single platform. They include owners of hotels and resorts, online tourism marketing managers and tour operators. The conclave seeks to inspire the first category form fresh client associations with tour operators and improve policies to use technology for growing business, while enabling the marketing managers to form tourism marketing undertakings into new markets. As for the tour operators, ICTT 2019 can help magnify tour-operator business with modern technology and form partnership with main hotels and resorts around the highlighted tourism terminuses, according to event convener Anish Kumar P K.
Registrations are on, and details are available on http://www.icttindia.org.
To be held at Le Meridian hotel here, ICTT 2019 will host a session on ‘How to do social media tourism promotion to get Chinese tourists?’ Beijing-based Richard Matuzevich of the World Tourism Cities Federation will address the delegates comprising tour operators, hoteliers, owners of resorts and homestays, SEO (search engine optimisation) companies, software firms, social media marketing companies and bloggers.
The other topics include ‘Impact of influential marketing in tourism’ (by Ellie Shedden, Australia), ‘Artificial intelligence and travel revolution’ (Hannes Losch, Germany), ‘Secrets of Search Engine Rankings’ (David Carollo, Singapore), ‘Tips to Become a Hood Digital Photographer’ (Shane Dallas, Kenya), ‘How to Create a Good Story about your Brand?’ (Jen Morilla, USA), ‘How to Create an Attention Grabbing Content/Blog’ (Heather Heuman, USA), ‘How to Use YouTube for Destination Promotion’ (Jessica Dante, UK) and ‘Program Tips for Improving E-A-T SEO’ (Sean Patrick Si, Philippines).
ICTT 2019 comes in the backdrop of increased travel by the people of China across the globe, notes Anish Kumar. “From what was 13.1 crores in 2017, the projected figure of Chinese tourists abroad is 20 crores next year,” he noted about their annual rise of around 20 per cent.
The inaugural ICTT was held in 2013, followed by a second edition in 2017 — all with idea of meeting the demand and supply of changing business situations even as the tourism community is comprehensively reliant on expertise and modernisation.
The conferences focus on preparing the travel and tourism industrialists in India and neighbouring countries by getting feedback in acclimatising to the varying technology, obtaining skills in surviving/winning over competitors, comprehending the significance of web marketing and the use of the resources accessible online to run business.
