KATHMANDU: Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) has designed a concept paper on Tourism Satellite Accounting (TSA).
“We have prepared a preliminary report,” said Kashi Raj Bhandari, director planning and monitoring at NTB. “It will help us prepare TSA that is designed to measure the economic impact of travel and tourism on a national, state, or regional economy.
Compared with traditional economic-impact methods, this system provides a more comprehensive and accurate view of the tourism industry.
For the first time NTB started its research and preparation of domestic tourism statistics that will support to draw a true picture of tourism industry. The research is first of its kind as there is no such research made on domestic tourism industry. “One can get indication data from the TSA annually,” he said adding that “but for the exact picture of tourism industry, the overall data after the research will help.”
A TSA is a statistical accountant framework in the field of tourism and measures the goods and services according to international standards of concepts, classifications and definitions which allow valid comparisons from country to country in a consistent manner.
A complete TSA contains detailed production accounts of the tourism industry and their linkages to other industries, employment, capital formation and additional non-monetary information on tourism.
“NTB is also going to start household survey from Kathmandu, Pokhara and Chitwan regarding the domestic tourist scenario,” said Bhandari. It wil help have a complete picture about the domestic tourism.
According to him, “there is no data of total domestic tourist movement in the country at present.
Amongst the four major objectives of Nepal Tourism Year 2011, development and promotion of domestic tourism is also one.
Major destination for
domestic tourist is
Kathmandu, Pokhara, Chitwan, Lumbini, Palpa, Makwanpur, Nagarkot, and Dhulikhel.
On an average about 50,000 to 60,000 domestic tourist travel annually to Pokhara and Chitwan. Domestic tourism — also called internal tourism — is visiting a different places where one does not live in.
Not only the foreign tourists, even many locals’ also prefer to stay in the comfort of a homely environment away from hustle and bustle of the city life. The desire for such holidays has given rise to the concept of domestic tourism. |
