Kerala Tourism has made earnest efforts to plan its products, destinations, infrastructure, and activities to appeal to visitors. Novel and improved strategies have helped improve the destination’s image and competitiveness.
Kerala Tourism has shown that special events promoted through online platforms will bring in footfall. An online international painting competition for children organised in 2018 in memory of Edmund Thomas Clint has been one of the largest ever campaigns and a case study for researchers.
Twin objectives
Clint was a child prodigy who died at an early age due to prolonged illness. He had left behind a legacy for generations to cherish. The competition was conducted with a two-pronged objective, primarily to increase footfall making Kerala familiar to millions across the globe. Secondly to throw light on little Clint, who lived only for 2,522 days yet created 25,000 beautiful pictures within that brief span of time. The painting competition in 2018, after the devastating floods, highlighted ‘Kerala’ in a positive manner.
To the surprise of the authorities, 48,390 registrations poured in for the online contest and there were 38,995 entries from 133 countries.
Those who registered for the contest were given e-books. The e-book focussed on Kerala’s art and rituals, destinations, festivals, and life and people aimed to motivate them to create their paintings.
A microsite was developed exclusively for the competition. The microsite, with 250 web pages, was the platform for registration and uploading paintings. The web page was translated into eleven foreign languages and nine regional languages making available all relevant details.
A total of 7,377 children from 43 countries in Asia registered for the event. It is assumed that these children and their parents might have researched on Kerala, browsed the e-book and other promotional materials provided during registration.
A total of 813 children registered from 41 countries in Europe, 972 from 22 countries from Africa, 205 from nine North American countries, ten from South America, and 52 from three countries in Australian Subcontinent.
Another success of the campaign was the registration of 679 adults as promoters. A total of 38,995 paintings were received from over 20,320 participants and 3,668 paintings were shortlisted.
Winners
The judging panel selected 100 paintings and six were selected by the public. Top ten winners were selected in the international category and top five winners in the national category (within India and outside Kerala). Internet traffic to the website doubled during the season, with good imprint in social media. More than 15 lakh visits came to the webpage keralatourism.org/clint, Director of Tourism P. Bala Kiran said, adding that Kerala Tourism was able to reach out to over 1.5 crore people.
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