The official portal got more than 13.4 lakh hits in all
More than 33 per cent of the 13.4 lakh hits on the official website of Mysore Dasara came from destinations outside India.
Spain, accounting for 5 per cent of the total traffic on the website, showed the most interest in the 10-day festival, said C. Kantharaj, Chief Executive Officer of Dot Angle, which designed the website for the second successive year with the support of National Informatics Centre (NIC). Last year, the highest number of hits from outside India came from the United Kingdom.
No wonder that a private trust, which organised a 2,000-seat exclusive gallery on Sayyaji Rao Road for foreign visitors to watch Jamboo Savari or Vijayadashami procession on October 4, had also arranged commentary in Spanish along with English.
“Much of the interest from Spain came from its city of Granada,” Mr. Kantharaj said. Granada, which also generated the highest traffic from cities outside India, was followed by London, Sydney, New York, Singapore, Melbourne and Toronto.
In India
In India, Bangalore accounted for 26 per cent of the traffic on the website followed by 18 per cent from the host city of Mysore. Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad followed Mysore.
Visitors to the website went up by more than 2 lakh compared to last year despite the absence of promotional activity by Karnataka’s Tourism Department. “In 2013, the department had taken up online promotion of Dasara on various travel portals, which accounted for a lot of the 11 lakh visitors to the website last year. This year, we had more visitors without any promotion,” he added.
The increase in the number of visitors to the website was also attributed to the introduction of mobile phone apps for Dasara festivities, besides the updates the organisers sent to subscribers on WhatsApp.
While 11,219 people subscribed to Dasara updates on WhatsApp, 3,298 Android phone users installed the Dasara app.
(The Hindu)
