ICTT Unwinds Art of Story-Telling as a Unique Marketing Strategy

KOCHI:
Kerala’s historic sites, markets, arts, cuisines and customs have now got new messages and tips to unravel them before tourists and travellers as the ongoing International Conference on Tourism Technology (ICTT 2017) hosted a session on the art of story-telling in an engaging way.
ICTT 2017, organized by Association of Tourism Trade Organisation (ATTOI) with the support of Kerala Tourism, shed light on the art and craft of storytelling to promote destinations in God’s Own Country during a session, titled ‘Art of destination storytelling’, as part of the three-day conference at the Le Meridien Hotel in Kochi..
Vijay Prabhat Kamalakara, the founder of Chennai-based start-up ‘Storytrails’ spoke on the topic during the event.
“The key elements are engaging experiences, people with intriguing perspectives, and memorable events. Storytelling for tourism destinations sounds very much like a natural part of what marketing a destination means and what is involved in promoting travel experiences in a destination,”  Kamalakara said.
He is the recipient of the ‘Young Creative Entrepreneur Award’ from the British Council and the ‘Youth Achiever Award for Innovative Entrepreneurship’ from Yuva Shakti. The speaker also narrated few anecdotes on some of the monuments and customs prevailing in India and other countries.
“After all, memorable travel experiences are all about stories: stories of the local communities and their cultural traditions, stories told by the expert storytellers, and stories about the travellers themselves that become part of travel experiences. This would help the travel agents to develop a new strategy to engage their guests,” said ATTOI President Anish Kumar P.K.
Georgia-based tech speaker Lauren Cleland spoke on the art of video story-telling. She, during the session, introduced the Savannah’s tourism promotion strategies through video story-telling.
“If a photograph is worth thousand words, a video is worth million as videos are the live formats of photographs. The video gives more authenticity. The live video feeds through the social media platforms are the best options for being genuine of what you market,” Cleland added.
The closing days sessions also addressed topics including Online Travel Agents websites, reviews, online reputations revenue management and even consumer behavior.