Kerala Tourism has been actively promoting the destination by hosting various online and offline campaigns. The Kerala Bid Wars was ongoing for months and they used Facebook and their own mobile app to engage the participants. Soon after they introduced the third iteration of Kerala Blog Express to invite travel bloggers from all over to explore the region. Along with this, they also introduced a contest for photography enthusiasts from all over the world.
This contest is being termed as Asia’s biggest Photography Contest and features cash prizes of INR 15,00,000 for the participants. From yesterday’s update, the event already had over 4432 participants from nearly 40 countries with still over a week to go. The highlight of this contest is the significant prize money and it is the first time Kerala Tourism has come up with a contest of this scale.
They are inviting photographers to share entries that support the tourism potential of Kerala and each participant can share up to three images. The contest is being promoted through their social media accounts and the entries are accepted through the website. The participants will first have to create an account on the website and then login to submit their entries. The entries will be judged by a committee comprising of eminent photographers and the shortlisted entries will be published on the Kerala Tourism Website to be rated by visitors. The visitor ratings will account for 25 percent of marks in judging the entries.
Photography contests are a great way to invite people to share images themed around the destination. Thanks to the significant improvements in mobile and digital photography, we have seen a surge in number of photographers. Offering large cash prizes in the contest will attract not only novice photographers but also professionals from all over.
Earlier this year, Tourism Malaysia introduced a photography contest but it was hosted on Instagram giving them even more visibility and fetch them more followers. Kerala Tourism has a different approach here. With the photographs being published on the website, the participants will definitely invite their friends to get public ratings and this in turn will help them strengthen their digital community.
The contest is open till December 31, 2015. You can visit the contest page to submit your entries. More details can be found here.
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