ENIT, the Italian national tourism board, earlier this week reopened its sole Mumbai office after a year-long absence in India.
Daniele Mancini, Italian ambassador to India, said at the opening: “India today is a high potential tourism market and numbers can only grow from here onwards in the coming years.”
ENIT set up its only Indian office in Mumbai in 2001, and has seen Indian outbound to Italy grow from 69,000 then to 467,000 in 2012.
“In the last one year, in spite of our absence in the Indian market, Italy has still recorded an important growth in tourist flow that shows the keen interest of Indian travellers towards Italy,” said Salvatore Ianniello, India representative, ENIT.
“We are looking forward to re-strengthening our past collaborations with our Indian trade partners and will be commencing shortly all activities related to the dissemination of travel-related information on Italy, such as educational and fam trips, location scouting, co-marketing activities, roadshows etc, and most importantly, being the point of contact for destination Italy.”
The NTO is planning workshops for the travel trade and will bank on Italy’s popularity as a setting for Indian films. ENIT will also establish the Italia Academy in 3Q2013, where Indian tour operators will attend training programmes in both India and Italy.
Koushik Goswami, general manager – outbound, Travelcorp, said: “Working in tandem with ENIT will help establish new circuits and identify new products in Italy, a destination that we have been selling for the last 15 years.”
