WELL THOUGHT PR STRATEGY REQUIRED TO FIGHT THIS CRISIS

The ghastly act of the terrorists to India’s financial capital and the gateway to tourist destinations will further hamper inflow of tourists to this great country. The government and several tourism corporations across India from each states has painstakingly built brand India and through the Incredible India campaign over the last few years in the foreign markets by raising our graph in the tourism world. To the best of my knowledge this brand building exercise has been going on for over 10 years and significant progress has been made by us in the world tourism map for tourists to consider India in their choice of destination when one thinks of going on a holiday. While some of the foreigners did express their views that they would like to come to the lovely city Mumbai and India after they were rescued but at a global level this will take a considerable beating as some of the countries has already issued advisory orders.

All of us know that building brands in foreign markets is a long drawn process both in terms of time and cost. Having reached so far we now need to re visit our drawing board and come out with some immediate measures to fight this crisis. This is a very classical case of CRISIS and PR will have to play a major role to restore the lost glory. India should immediately act, so that whatever equity we have in the tourism space should be closely protected and should not erode further.

How this can happen? A special task force needs to be set up to address this problem to guard our image. India should work closely with all the countries whose people visit our country immediately, before negative word of mouth start spreading though various media and other agencies. Our first strategy is to instantly protect the image we already have before it slides down. We need to go on a war footing to handle this crisis. This will involve a great amount of orchestration with the home, defence, foreign and tourism ministry so that there is cohesive strategy to handle this internally before we chalk out our strategy to hit the global media etc.

All this will cost more rupees and time but at this hour of crisis every Indian should think positive and help India restore the lost shine. We have come out from several difficult situation and I am sure we will counter this and teach a strong lesson to who ever is jealous behind India’s growth both on the economic and tourism front.