The largest state sponsored tourism event of Manipur – Manipur Sangai Festival (MSF) is all set to take place from November 24th to 30th, 2019 at Imphal. Commenced in the year 2010, the festival has grown over the years into a big platform for the state to showcase its rich tradition and culture, and helps promote Manipur as a world class tourism destination.
In an attempt to get more from this mega festival, the Department of Tourism Government of Manipur is gearing up to create exceptional awareness among the stakeholders of travel fraternity (tour operators) and travellers from India and across the world.
“We have already chalked-out our marketing and promotional strategy to create awareness about this year’s edition among the tour operators, travel agents and travellers of this country. We have participated at TTF in Ahmedabad recently and conducted a roadshow to promote the upcoming Sangai Festival,” said Dr Yumnam Suraj Singh, MCS, Deputy Secretary Government of Manipur and Deputy Director – Tourism, Manipur while speaking to Whereabouts.
Manipur Tourism also participated at the Annual Convention of Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) in Kolkata and made a presentation about the Festival to educate the large number of inbound tour operators present there.
Every edition of the festival showcases the tourism potential of the state in the field of Arts & Culture, Handloom, Handicrafts, Indigenous Sports, Cuisine, Music and Adventure sports of the state etc. “Through this festival we are encouraging our people to preserve our nature, culture and cuisine and disseminate to the wider range of tourist from across the country and the world as well,” he added.
With increasing participation from neighbouring and other countries, the Festival expects to witness participation from several countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Maldives, Malaysia, Mauritius, and Zimbabwe etc.
“Though it is at preparatory and finalization stage, we are expecting to have at least five teams to participate in sports competition this year. Usually US Polo Association, British Polo Association, Argentina and Kenya they do come every year. So this time also they may be turn up,” informed Singh. Apart from this Polo event the cultural exhibition, Indigenous Sports, Adventure Sports, Fashion Shows, Rock Shows are being organized in different locations during the festival.
The salient feature of this year’s edition is that the festival would be more environment friendly elaborating more on this, Singh says: “Our chief minister has advised us to make this festival plastic free or reduce the usage of plastic as much as possible. We are moving on the paper and clothes bags to make this festival environment friendly.”
Elaborating on the growth of Tourism in Manipur, Dr Singh said that the state has registered an average growth of 31 percent in last five years. “In the year 2018-19 we have received almost 178000 tourists as compare to 162000 in the year 2017-18. We are getting a huge chunk of travellers from Eastern side of the country i. e. Bengal and Odisha etc. We have targeted Gujarat to get more travellers from there for the first time.”
In terms of Foreign Tourist Arrivals, the state has registered a growth of 158 percent in 2019 over 2018. “Apart from Southeast Asia from where we are getting large number of foreign tourist, United States, UK, Greece and Egypt are emerging as big markets for us. Also, some of them participated at Sangai Festival last year. We are looking to attract more footfalls to our state that tourism can become the growth engine of our economy,” said Dr Singh.
