TEAM HERALD
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PANJIM: Goa tourism will venture in a big way into social media networks ~ Facebook and Twitter ~ to reach out to tourists across the globe and take on competitors such as Kerala and Gujarat.
“The target is to have 10 million people in the next one and a half year, who will ‘Like’ our page,” said tourism director Nikhil Desai adding that the objective is to create an interest among people on Goa tourism through new digital networking.
An all-new page of the Goa Tourism Department has been launched on Facebook which was undertaken as a project by students of the Goa Institute of Management.
Student, Floyd Tavares, who led the GIM team and designed Goa tourism’s official digital footprint said, “Kerala and Gujarat are way ahead of us on this new mode of networking but we are confident of not only measuring up to them but beating them in the months to come.”
Since the official launch earlier this month, the Facebook page of Goa Tourism Department has already hit 350 Likes.
In the next couple of days the project managers (GIM’s marketing club and team Samriddhi) for Goa Tourism Department’s Facebook page are launching innovative contests, activities, quality content postings and a large number of creative concepts to attract fans for Goa tourism.
Starting Wednesday night is the ‘Bid and Win’ contest where free stays are to be won at exotic resorts in Goa. This will be followed by a photography contest and so on.
Besides posting updates and happenings in Goa, there will be incentives to fans by giving them something in return for visiting the page.
Tavares commenting further about the task at hand in launching one of the biggest tourism brands in the world, stated that Goans and tourists connect to Brand Goa like no other. “There exists a strong emotional connect with places they visit and people they meet in Goa and this initiative shall act as a catalyst in pushing our efforts in making the page go viral.”
Tavares however said that the biggest problem lies in the existence of fake facebook accounts in the name of ‘Goa Tourism’ that are leveraging Goa’s brand value for their own personal benefits. “Fans of Goa might be misled to these fake pages instead of the official page which is named ‘Goa Tourism Department’.
Besides developing mainstream media like Facebook and Twitter, GIM students are also concentrating efforts in experimenting with media such as Instagram&Pinterest.
Instagrammers upload pictures with the hash # tag ‘Capture Goa’ and have photographs directly uploaded on the Goa Tourism Department Facebook page.
