Thiruvananthapuram:
As part of its strategy to use Information Technology to promote its products, Kerala tourism has come out with a fresh set of mobile-based services and IT-based projects to make the passage to 'God's Own Country' hassle-free and make the stay pleasant.
The new services like mobile website, WAP guide, applications and Bluetooth Kiosks will be launched by state Tourism Minister A P Anil Kumar in Thiruvananthapuram tomorrow.
Visitors connected with their smart phones and mobile apps would be able to explore destinations without external support, but by using these products having a wide range of features like tour planning, updates, guidance and destination details, a Kerala Tourism press release said today.
The Tourism Department is also setting up bluetooth kiosks of international standards at key places like airports in the state to help tourists coming.
Kerala Tourism had won the national Tourism Award for its website (www.keralatourism.org) five times in the last decade, recognizing its innovations.
The Kerala Tourism website, started with just 50 visitors a day in 1998, now gets 7000-8000 visits per day and more than 2.5 million visits a year.
Kerala tourism is also active in social media like You Tube with three million video views a year, 1.76 lakhs fans on Facebook and 9500 followers in Twitter.
IT initiatives for travellers and industry, social media campaigns like micro-blogging, social networking, travel social networks, photo sharing, brand video channel on YouTube, Facebook fan page, web-based campaigns have given edge an to Kerala to win the award.