Canada launches campaign to attract Indian tourism market

Canada launches campaign to attract Indian tourism market
Tuesday, 24 February 2009

The Canadian Tourism Commission has announced plans to enter India’s tourism market which it says has “outward-bound potential”. The new campaign for priority international markets was launched last week in Mumbai by the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry and Andrew Clark, the CTC's Vice President of Sales and Market Development.

"Our two countries share a commonwealth background and already have many strong ties through immigration and two-way trade” said Minister Clement. Tourism from India to Canada has grown an estimated 6.9% per year since 1995.

This announcement follows the release of Canada's Economic Action Plan which gave the CTC an extra $20 million for the next two years to develop prioritised international markets. Michele McKenzie, the CTC's President and CEO pointed out that this gave CTC a great opportunity to expand into a high growth emerging market such as India. “Prudent diversification keeps us from being overly reliant on mature tourism markets” said McKenzie.

Clark believes that the CTC will be successful in penetrating the Indian market due to the country’s “highly successful tourism brand, strong research capabilities, excellent strategies, and marketing and sales tools.” In recent years Canada’s tourism marketing has had success in markets such as Mexico, South Korea and China.

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