Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 8: The three-day national conference on `Destination Branding and Competitive Positioning’, organised by School of Business Studies, Central University of Jammu (CUJ), concluded today.
The chief guest of the event, former Ambassador G Parthasarthy, who is Chancellor of the Central University of Jammu. delivered his address and stressed on spiritual dimensions besides highlighting immense scope of faith tourism particularly pertaining to the Buddhist Circuit in the country.
He emphasized on the need to tap the South East Asian market and called for immediate attention to deficiencies from cultural perspective and need to inculcate cultural sensitivity while conducting tourism activities.
Stating the crucial role of academia, he encouraged the scholars present to work in consonance with Government to deliver excellence in tourism development at all levels. He pointed out that India is not a country with uniformity in cultures and needs to leverage its diversity and project itself as an epicentre of religious, cultural and ethnic diversity.
In his presidential remarks, Prof Ashok Aima, Vice Chancellor, CUJ, reiterated the importance of maintaining balance between economic benefits and socio-environmental impact of tourism. Concurring with the ideas of G Parthasarthy, Prof Aima shared his vision regarding the role universities can play as active catalyst in policy formation at state and central level.
The keynote address was delivered by Prof C Reddy, Director, NIHTM, Hyderabad, who shared the difficulty in promoting tourism in the newly formed State of Telangana and how they have been overcoming it.
Drawing comparison with Indonesia, he said we should learn from successful marketing campaign of other nations which have helped in distinct branding of their tourism destinations.
Prof Jaya Bhasin summarised positive outcomes of the conference while Dr Neelika Arora apprised the audience about the key takeaways of the conference.
This was followed by the release of edited e-book “Evolving Trends and Sustainable Tourism” authored by Dr Jaya Bhasin, Dr Shahid Mushtaq and Dr Neelika Arora. An e-book of abstracts of various research papers that were accepted for the present conference was also released. Dr M Naved Khan, Adjunct Faculty, School of Business Studies, and the Conference Chair, presented the vote of thanks. Anjali Pathania was the master of ceremony.
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