V Ayyappan TNN
April 23, 2009
Chennai: Tamil Nadu is becoming popular among tourists in the virtual world. The government is set to leverage the strength of the internet and regional languages to market the state across the world. Tamil Nadu Tourism plans to introduce its website in other Indian languages also. The Tamil version was launched recently and the Hindi, Telugu and Kannada versions are expected to follow soon. And www.tamilnadutourism.org now has more features including a 24-hour helpline. “We want to showcase the state among domestic tourists and also among the diaspora of different states. Feedback shows that tourists are more comfortable in reading about tourist spots and making bookings in their own language. So we have decided to introduce our website in other languages,” said a senior tourism department official. “This encouraged us to introduce us to make a website in Tamil. The response to the English website is tremendous. We receive 40 to 50 online bookings per day from 70 countries. Most of them prefer to book online,” said an official who is in charge of the website. In a majority of the cases, the hits are getting translated into business. Tamil Nadu Tourism raked in a revenue of Rs 138.70 lakh in 2008-09 as against Rs 112.38 lakh in previous year. “We receive around 100 mails asking for tips on travelling, booking hotels, address of places and other requirements,” he added. “We want to market the state to more tourists abroad. The website helps us do that in a better and user-friendly manner than campaigns and promotions,” said tourism commissioner M Rajaram. He said steps were being taken to translate the website into Hindi because the state was receiving lots of tourists from north India, especially those coming on spiritual tours or for medical treatment. “They will be able to get tourism-related information better if we have a website in Hindi.”
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