Indiantelevision.com Team

(20 June 2007 7:30 pm)

MUMBAI: Singapore Tourism Board (STB) claims to have had a 20 per cent increase in tourist influx from India in the month of May, post the tie-up with Star Plus show Baa Bahu aur Baby.

As part of STB's efforts to promote Singapore as a family destination, they joined hands with the comedy series through embedded promotional content. Additionally, a micro site was launched to incorporate interactivity with consumers.

The series of episodes the show ran for three weeks in the month of March started with one of the female protagonist in the serial Chaitali, winning a free trip to Singapore. This entire plot was used effectively as drama for promoting Singapore as a family destination with the members of the family flying to Singapore and experiencing the place.

STB regional director South Asia, Middle East and Africa - Singapore Siew-Kheng Kang says, "Keeping India in mind, we wanted to emotionally target the viewers. Family segment is very critical for us and Baa Bahoo aur Baby is the right platform as it is a light hearted drama with a lot of family values which was apt for our initiative."

"Singapore is truly a family destination and very welcoming towards tourists and offers world class facilities and beautiful places to visit along with family and we wanted to promote that," added Kang.

To gauge the effectiveness of the campaign, STB conducted research through a micro site with a voting system developed so that consumers could log in and vote for the best family brand ads. These ads had four families enjoying different tourist destinations in Singapore like Merlion Park, Zoo and Bird park.

The micro-site was made interactive with a provision for visitors to add travelogues and other experiences in Singapore. STB claims that this helped both in understanding the customers' psyche and in evaluating how effective the communication was to the end customer.

Speaking about this online initiative Khang said, "We got 3000 votes and around 10 per cent shared their experiences in Singapore."

Singapore witnesses highest number of tourists in May. The tie-up seems to rubbed off through higher tourist influx, according to STB officials.

Khang replies, "The marketing objective of the overall campaign was achieved, with the Indian visitor arrivals to Singapore for the month of May registering a 20 per cent increase as compared to the same period last year."

STB also has a tie up with ICICI bank wherein the bank's credit card holders will get prizes on spending more than $1000. STB also organizes regular events and summer sales festivals to attract tourists from various Asian countries.

Last year they promoted tourism through Krrish which was shot in Singapore.