Goa to airbrush image with media campaign

  The state will also host its own international travel mart later this year in October.
“The objective is to present this as a fresh, young destination, attractive to the affluent Indian youth,” said Tourism Minister Nilkanth Harlankar. The two-month promo will feature TV starlet Prachi Desai.

Officials said though the media attention Goa had invited for the wrong reasons had hurt tourism to some extent, a recovery had been achieved in 2009-2010. Domestic arrivals were up 3.5 per cent and international tourists increased by 12.5 per cent against the previous year. Some 2.17 million Indian tourists holidayed here last year. Among the 3.5 lakh foreign arrivals, tourists from Russia, Germany and the UK formed the largest group of travellers.