BANGALORE: The Chhattisgarh Tourism Board (CTB) plans to spend Rs 100 million towards advertising and marketing during the next fiscal starting 1 April.

Over the past six months, CTB has spent around Rs 700 million to this end.

State Tourism Departments and Boards across the country have been spending money to attract the tourists. In a bid to attract domestic and international tourists and to build awareness, CTB had planned a marketing campaign – ‘I discovered…..’ . The campaign will roll out across print, television and online.

An earlier initiative to attract tourists from the US and Germany by campaigns in those countries was quite successful, said CTB managing director Tapesh Kumar Jha.

CTB wants to attract the HNI from India and in the first phase aims at reaching out to nine Indian cities – Delhi, Bangalore, Raipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Vishakhapatnam, Nagpur and Hyderabad. It’s ‘I discovered…’ campaign has an underlying theme that drew from the pleasure an delight of experiencing the new and the unknown. It attempts to touch an emotional chord –the ads highlight interesting facts about the state.

CTB has been employing different agencies for its creative work across mediums and has been buying media directly or through the Chhattisgarh government‘s own internal agency.