Witnessing 7.94 lakh foreign tourists arrival in 2012 as compared to 7.33 lakh in 2011, Kerala earned Rs 21,125 crore revenue from tourism sector last year, with a little help from Google Inc.

"The total revenue, both direct and indirect from tourism in Kerala touched Rs 21,125 crore in 2012 compared to Rs 19,037 crore in 2011," Kerala Tourism spokesperson T V Prasanth told reporters here today.

Compared to 93.88 lakh domestic tourists in 2011, 1.01 crore domestic tourists visited Kerala in 2012. The Foreign exchange earnings had also gone up from Rs 4,221.99 crore in 2011 to Rs 4,548 crore in 2012, Prasanth said.

The iconic rise of Kerala as a global destination continued in the past year as Kerala consolidated its position on the world tourism map with fantastic strides in all aspects of tourism.

The synergy developed between tour operators, property owners, travel agencies and search engines like Google and connectivity solutions like Wi-Fi and mobile Internet have resulted in a massive upsurge in foreign interest in Kerala through the world of internet, the spokesperson said.

Harnessing the powers of the digital revolution, Kerala has projected itself very well onto the social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Kerala has become the number one travel destination in the Google's search trends for India this year. Munnar is also on the list of Top 10 Indian destinations on Google's Zeitgeist site showing search trends from around the world. Successful partnership meets were conducted at Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi.

This year, Kerala Tourism proposes to conduct such meets in Tier 2 cities such as Gurgaon, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Lucknow, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Surat, Nagpur, Pune, Indore, Bhubaneswar and Raipur, Prasanth said.

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