`Taiwan To Aggressively Tap India Market’

With an aggressive campaign set in place, Jean Hwang, director, international affairs division, tourism bureau, ministry of transportation and communication, ROC Taiwan in an exclusive interview with Jyoti Koul talks about the importance and future plans for the India market

What is the strength of Indians visiting Taiwan?

On an average 14,000 tourist visit Taiwan from India. But from January to August 2004, Taiwan received 10, 000 Indian tourists of which 700 were business travellers and 319 leisure tourists. We are trying to create cost-effective itineraries. At present, there are more than seven Indian restaurants in Taiwan and we are encouraging more investors to open Indian restaurants out here as we certainly do not want food to be an impediment to growth.

Are you focussing on niche areas?

Yes, so far, it is only corporate or business travellers that have experienced Taiwanese hospitality. In order to lure Indian travellers, we are now targeting families and are planning to launch some stop- over packages for transit passengers. As we are just getting acquainted with the Indian market, we have targeted Bollywood as another target segment. This would be an apt step as the destination is exotic with virgin destinations and also adequate infrastructure to support Bollywood movies.

What are the promotional and marketing strategies being adopted for India?

As this is our first aggressive effort to tap the potent Indian market, we are just beginning and will get more focussed. We have also recently set up a public relations and marketing agency in India. This agency will promote the destination and also helps create necessary awareness, this takes care of our advertisements and campaigns and looks into sales as well. We also have the support from China airlines. The airline has played an important role in promoting Taiwan. As far as targets are concerned, they are not very big as it is just the beginning, we are expecting at least a 10 per cent increase from India.

What will be your brand building exercise?

Initially, the campaign carried was 'Taiwan - Touch Your Heart', but now, we are contemplating on other aspects. The new branding would be in the lines of 'Taiwan - Beyond Expectations' keeping the destinations USPs in mind. We are involving all stakeholders to participate in tourism promotion. The bureau has also taken up an aggressive campaign to promote Taiwan internationally. We are getting very active in our marketing strategies and brand positioning.

What efforts are being made to ease visa procedures and what are your budgets for the Indian market?

Visa is one area we are focussing on in order to procure volumes from the Indian market. We are currently in talks with visa authorities and hopefully, the outcome should be in our favour as we are investing or spending money to attract the market, we are keen to see the results. Since this is our first attempt, our budget is quite substantial for India. Our international budget allocations is US$ 30 million for 2004 and of which, the spend on India is less than five per cent.