Odisha Channel Bureau
Bhubaneswar: The success story of Odisha’s Digital Presence has been captured as a Prime Tourism and e-Gov Use case by Adobe. Recognising a one of a kind implementation of the Adobe stack in the Government & Public Sector, software giant Adobe Systems has featured the Digital Transformation of Odisha Tourism in a succinct and insightful case study.
This feat can be attributed to the vision of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik who has been driving reform and governance in the State under the 5T framework (Transparency, Teamwork, Technology and Time leads to Transformation).
“Leveraging digital technologies is consistently helping us unlock our true potential in an all-inclusive manner”, he had said during the launch of Odisha Tourism’s revamped website last year.
According to an official release issued by the State government on Saturday, in executing this vision, the Department of Tourism leveraged Adobe’s technology to boost its brand awareness, and thereby greater tourist inflow.
Identifying the importance of digital tourism, Vishal K. Dev, IAS, Commissioner-cum-Secretary, Dept. of Tourism led the revamping of Odisha’s digital presence prior to the Odisha Men’s Hockey World Cup organised in the state’s capital back in November 2018.
The Tourism Department envisioned the website to be a one-stop solution for all travelers, supported by an entire ecosystem of tourism service providers on the same platform. Over a period of a little over a year and three developmental stages, Odisha Tourism’s website, social media and digital campaign now run as an integrated well-oiled machine disbursing uniform brand messaging across platforms.
AEM’s Adobe Analytics continues to be used to increase the efficacy of targeting travelers, influence their purchase decisions and thus result in an increased tourist footfall in the state. Using an extrapolated RoI model, the objective is to orient digital marketing spending strategies to attract high value tourists.
The website features a travel aggregation portal for travel and tour operators to showcase their products and services, a contribution portal for bloggers and vloggers, a ready reckoner on 50+ tourist destinations in Odisha along with a trip planner. It also features booking for OTDC Hotels, Heritage Properties and various hotels.
The digital initiative has given a tremendous impetus to the Odisha tourism brand and has generated 1100+ online leads, nearly half a million monthly website visitors, features 130+ registered travel agents, 232 hotels and their 115 crowdsourced packages and trails and 70+ active members from the bloggers’ community. These statistics are a definite indicator of the enhanced interest in exploring Odisha by potential tourists, sector intermediaries and content generators from across India and the globe.
Dev said, “The digital initiative has come a long way from its nascent version of just being an idea backed by will, to a tangible asset positively impacting tourism. We plan to leverage the website to bring onboard affiliate travel agents from different geographies to increase the influx of tourists across the globe.”
The technology implementation partner for Odisha Tourism is CSM Technologies, a pioneering Govtech firm with an active presence in Indian & African markets. In addition to preparing a UX blueprint based on user personas, CSM has leveraged its expertise in the Adobe Experience Management stack to deliver a state-of-the-art website for Odisha Tourism.
