Recently, Asia DMC, a company with experience in the Indian market, suggested what to do to attract Indian tourists. In it, there is an idea of strong investment for MICE tourism – weddings.
According to Asia DMC’s market research report on Indian tourists to Vietnam, the growth rate of Indian visitors to Vietnam in recent times is quite high.
In the period from 2015-2019, the average growth rate reached 26.7%, the number of visitors increased from 65,600 arrivals to 169,000 arrivals, rising to the 16th position in the markets sending tourists to Vietnam the most.
However, this number of visitors is still too small compared to the number of visitors to destinations in the region. In 2019, Thailand welcomed 1.9 million Indian visitors, Singapore welcomed 1.41 million, Malaysia welcomed 735,000 and Indonesia welcomed 537,000 visitors.
Asia DMC, citing information from Indiatimes, said that this country’s tourists think that the attractive points of Vietnam destinations are budget savings, can easily travel because of its ease of arrival, and Covid-19 testing procedures is simplified.
In addition, Vietnam has many beautiful natural scenes and rich tourism experiences such as mountain tourism or sea tourism, diverse cuisine, can connect to other tourist attractions in the region such as taking a bus from Vietnam to Siem Reap (Cambodia) and is a friendly tourist destination.
Customer segments
According to Asia DMC, India is a multi-religious and multi-ethnic country. Each region has its own language, customs and food. Therefore, although this is a market with a lot of potential, it is a difficult market and has its own characteristics, especially in terms of food and drink, and religion.
In order to attract tourists from this country, India should not be considered as just a homogeneous tourism source market, but should be divided into separate customer segments and based on the characteristics of that group of visitors to build suitable products.
According to Asia DMC, for Indian tourists, they can be divided into five customer segments, including group package tourists, wealthy families, urban (freelance independent tourists, Millennials – small groups of 6-10 people and Gen Z travelers).
In addition, the destination also needs to pay attention to several sub-segments, emerging as solo travelers, female travelers and luxury travelers.
SOTC, India’s leading travel agency, also identified six additional customer segments to help travel service providers design and tailor services to each customer segment.
That is budget-friendly travel seekers, convenience seekers, family experiences, adventure travel, leisure travel and luxury travel.
Invest in MICE products – weddings
Asia DMC suggests many products that Vietnamese destinations can develop to attract Indian tourists. In which, the most prominent is MICE tourism (combined tourism to participate in events).
Currently, this market has many requirements for MICE groups, including weddings, filming, golfing, etc. In which, wedding tourism is a very attractive segment.
India’s overseas wedding market is estimated to be worth more than US$600 million and growing each year at a rate of 25-30%. Popular destinations for weddings are Thailand, UAE, Malaysia, Bali, Greece, Italy…
The competition to attract Indians to weddings is heating up. In 2019, countries like Turkey, Azerbaijan, Maldives and Thailand to organize survey trips, acquaintance tours for Indian wedding planners.
This year, Thailand focuses on the Indian wedding segment. The destination will organize a series of roadshows to exploit this stretch of road. Thai hotels have connected to meet wedding planners in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.
Meanwhile, Vietnam does not have many similar promotional events, so it only attracts a few weddings in Phu Quoc and Da Nang.
“This is a potential source of visitors and has a great impact on promoting the image and tourism services of Vietnam to India. Therefore, it is necessary to take measures to promote this source of visitors”, said Asia DMC.
@ Saigon Times
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Source: Vietnam Insider