A two-day workshop on Digital Marketing was organised by Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board (MPTB) in collaboration with Global Himalayan Expedition on January 6 and 7, 2020 in Bhopal.

The workshop was designed specifically for rural and urban homestay owners and developmental NGOs working on rural tourism. These groups have been selected by the MP Tourism. The workshop focused on the dissemination of knowledge and ideas on various aspects of Digital Marketing that will help take their business online and help them in getting online market linkage.

This intensive 20-hour workshop covered various aspects of Digital Marketing ranging from introduction to various digital marketing platforms, creating strategy, hands on various social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, setting up listings on Booking.com and Airbnb, Importance of content creation specifically pictures and videos and finally analysing the digital outreach with various online tools.

“What you see is what you get. In today’s world of Digital marketing, everyone in the tourism industry is using the online platforms to promote themselves and their destinations.

This becomes imperative for even the rural homestay owners to understand the fundamentals of Digital Marketing and use it effectively to promote their rural authentic experiences, for which the world is currently looking for” – as mentioned by Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, Managing Director, Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board.

Jaideep Bansal, Digital Marketing expert from GHE took hands on sessions for the participants and empathised the use of various listing platforms to get traction for homestays owners. In addition, the Digital Marketing experts from Global Himalayan Expedition (GHE), guests’ speakers from Booking.com, Anirudh Baveja and Aastha Dogra, also attended the workshop and provided expert advice on how to list their properties on booking.com.

The workshop was attended by 50 participants from over 25 NGOs and Homestay Owners.