SAYONI BHADURI – Mumbai
World’s second smallest country, Monaco is looking to grow percentage of visitors from India to two per cent from current one per cent. Eric Marsan, director Marketing, Monaco Government Tourist and Convention Authority said that up to 82 per cent of tourist business that comes to Monaco is leisure and the remaining 18 per cent is MICE. This is also dominated by France, US and UK. “India brings in a very small percentage of tourists, around one per cent, this however is great as compared to none. We hope to see this increase to two per cent in the coming year,” he said. In 2010 there were 1200 travellers from India, this number grew to around 1500 in 2011 and is expected to grow 25 per cent in 2012.
Monaco receives more than four million visitors every year. Monaco could be the premier choice for meeting and recreation, specially keeping in focus that destination is committed to providing very special value-driven offers for MICE and customised programmes. Discussing this further Rajeev Nangia, director- India – Monaco Government and Tourist Bureau said, “We offer tailor made programmes for MICE.”
He further added that for FITs there is the Passport Programme which the travel trade can avail. “This programme was initiated in India last year. The travel trade gets a big price benefit as they get wholesale rates for the the hotels,” he said. He also added that the target audience in India is the quality conscious traveller, accordingly the focus are the metro cities.
