Kerala Tourism: Gods Own Country

Source: Nargundkar, Rajendra. (2009). Services marketing: the McGraw-Hill Companies

About the case

This case is all about PROMOTION, i.e. how a promotion of any service helps it in selling itself. This case is talking about Kerala Tourism. This case tells that how a great promotional campaign changed the perception of customers towards Kerala. They advertised themselves as Gods own country. Campaign not only draws attention of foreign tourists, but also attracted domestic tourists. This results, Kerala has successfully entered itself in tourist map of the world.

About the case

To support this, many tangible developments took place in Kerala like: a) Tourism related project in Bekal. b) Good road/ rail connections. c) Availability of different types of hotels, and resorts and many more developments took place. By all this effort Kerala has emerged as a developed tourist place. The level of services has improved in Kerala.

Promotion
Promotion is one of the market mix elements, and a term used frequently in marketing. There are three basic objectives of promotion. These are: a) To present information to consumers as well as others. b) To increase demand. c) To differentiate a product.

Promotional tools
Various promotional tools used by Kerala tourism are: a) TV campaigns. b) Print campaigns. c) Advertising film for Kerala tourism. d) Internet promotion ( YouTube, mobile WAP, etc). e) Partnering with private players. f) Social media marketing.

 Special consideration in promotion of Services: a) Clear focus on benefits. b) Emphasis on tangible elements. c) Promotion can create tangible metaphors for the intangible service. d) Information can be provided in the communication to train customers to use the service.

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