By Liz Mathew A RECORD surge in tourist arrivals in India has highlighted the success of the country's best sales pitch yet . Incredible India! From flickering on the world tourism map with a lone Taj Mahal, India today stands among the five top tourism destinations worldwide, thanks to a slick multimedia campaign that has attractively showcased known and not so well known holiday vistas and put India on the international holidaymakers' imagination. India, a growing power and the acknowledged back office to the world, has been pushing tourism through the highprofile Incredible India campaign that encapsulates the experience of travelling in the subcontinent and plays up everything from its enchanting beaches and lush green mountains to unexplored tourist spots. The year 2004 was considered one of the best for India's tourism industry thanks to the campaign that not only picked up accolades but boosted foreign tourists' arrivals by about 16 percent. "In 2004 the Incredible India campaign led to 36 percent growth in US dollar terms and 25 percent in number of tourists (both domestic and foreign)," Tourism Joint Secretary Amitabh Kant told IANS. In absolute terms, foreign exchange earnings increased from $368.4 million to $502.4 million last year. In 2003, the year the campaign was launched, it created 26 percent growth in value and 20 percent in terms of numbers. India last year received a record 3.3 million overseas visitors against 2.4 million in 2003. The boom in tourism has been amazing. At the recent Paris air show at Le Bourget, Indian Airlines, the domestic carrier, stunned everyone by indicating it had earmarked $13 billion on 150 new aircraft, reflecting the spectacular growth in tourism over the past few years. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, India's tourism industry will have an annual real growth rate of nine percent over the next 10 years, double the rate forecast for global tourism and more than what is predicted for China (8.6 percent). The council also said overall revenue would increase to $90 billion within a decade. There would be an impressive increase in tourism and travel-related employment by three million. One in 18 jobs would be in tourism. Indian tourism officials credit this incredible growth to the campaign, which they say kick-started the phenomenal growth in offshore and domestic tourism. Leading tourism journals have listed India among the top five destinations. "The annual Lonely Planet pulse survey has rated India as among the top five tourist destinations after the campaign hit the market," Kant said. The Incredible India campaign, which successfully attracted attention to destinations other than the Taj Mahal, was awarded the Pacific Asian Travel Association (PATA) Gold Award. Conde Nast Traveler ranked India sixth among the world's top 10 destinations in its annual readers' traveller awards and the country won top points for its cultural diversity, hospitality and good value for money. The campaign has also captured the attention of travel consultants. "The promo campaign is making a powerful visual impact and creating a perception of India being a magical place to visit," Anne Morgaon Scully, president of McCabeBremer Travel in Virginia, told IANS. The first phase of the campaign, which positioned India as a safe tourism destination of choice for sensitive travellers, focused on traditional healing arts like ayurveda, spirituality and largely unexplored tourist spots. While pilgrimage spots like Buddhist circuit cutting through north Indian states became a big draw for tourists from Southeast Asian countries, Kerala gained a reputation as a premium spa centre and for its enthralling backwater cruises. "I love India for its colours. It's so colourful everywhere. Our people are boring compared to India," Jana Evans, a Grammy Award winning motivational singer, said about her first visit to the country. It was this fascination with India that the tourism department explored in the next phase of the campaign, the theme for which was "colours of India". "Earlier India's tourism began and ended with Taj Mahal and Agra. But the campaign brought vivid and colourful pictures of other faces of India such as the golden deserts, green backwaters and colourful villagers in Rajasthan," said Sayantani, a travel buff who likes to explore off-track tourism spots. With India's travel industry targeting five million visitors this year, the government has decided to spend 700 million rupees ($ 16 million) on the third phase of the campaign. "This time we will target niche areas and medical tourism apart from other things that can be done in India to present the country in a contemporary manner," Kant explained. The government has selected 15 advertisement agencies for producing literature, brochures, websites and doing other work for the campaign. Tourism Minister Renuka Chowdhury believes the vigorous campaign should be backed by adequate infrastructure development to better India's position as a nation that attracts less than one percent of global tourism. Chowdhury said the government had decided to upgrade airports and to encourage people to lend residential areas out to tourists and to take up properties on lease to build new hotels. Her move to train airport staff and taxi drivers for quality service . under the theme 'Atithi Devo Bhava' (an old Sanskrit maxim that extols the guest as god) . has also reinforced the message of Incredible India. Officials involved in the process of branding India admitted that it was extremely difficult and complex to establish a clear, precise identity for a multi-product, varied destination like India. "India is bigger than 23 countries of Europe, and every single state of India has its own unique product," said Kant, who has been actively involved in packaging the tourism sector. But Kant and his colleagues in the tourism ministry are happy that their aim to develop India into a global brand with strong brand equity has been incredibly successful so far.