Nepal has set a target to bring in 1 million tourists during Nepal Tourism Year (NTY) 2011.
In 2010, a total of 610,000 tourists had visited the country. To realize the target, the country is required to scale up arrivals by 40 percent, which is tenfold the estimated global tourist growth rate in 2011.
Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) also seems upbeat about the prospects of the mega campaign seeing light of the day.
Talking to Nepalnews, Prachanda Man Shrestha, CEO, NTB, said the likelihood of NTY 2011 achieving its numerical target is simply high.
“In the last month of January, tourist arrivals in the country increased by 26 percent compared to the same month last year. And, the trend being seen this month in February is also pretty encouraging,” he said.
According to Shrestha, the booking rate of hotels currently stands at an impressive 80 to 90 percent.
The NTB has also already announced a supplementary tourism package “Summer Splendid” for the upcoming May to September summer season.
Keeping into account the fact that said season is considered dry, the new package is expected to reinforce the mega campaign.
The board has also decided to leverage tourism related events every month during the course of NTY 2011 in order to attract attention of international travel and tour operators and media to promote the image of this national event.
Secretary General of UN World Tourism Organization and Tourism ministers of SAARC member countries apart from representatives from 49 international media organizations from countries like India, Russia, UK, Qatar and Japan, attended the formal launch of the year-long tourism promotional campaign.
The successful holding of the concert of internationally acclaimed rockstar Bryan Adams in the month of February disseminated the message that Nepal is not an unsafe country as is often tried to make out to be, remarked Shrestha.
“Nepal accomplished this large-scale event in a disciplined and smooth manner. In terms of tourism, this is a big step considering that even a big country as India could not organize the Bryan Adams rock concert owing to security reasons,’ he added.
Likewise, the NTB is planning to hold international-level mountain biking competition in March, cannoning in May and other tourism related events during the months of 2011.
Shrestha also said that the board is geared up to integrate 4 Cs (Commitment, Coordination, Capacity Building and Consumer Publicity) into the mega campaign.
The first C i.e Commitment is all about garnering assurance on the part of every concerned to work together for the success of NTY 2011. The second C i.e Coordination denoted the combined efforts while the third C i.e Capacity Building incorporate imparting basic training courses for the concept of home stay.
Under the Capacity Building, orientation classes related to house-keeping, kitchen handling and serving hygienic food will be given to those who are keeping tourists in their home.
Despite all this, Shrestha also cautiously admitted the fact there are some supply constraints that need to be addressed to abort any negative repercussions on the NTY euphoria.
Apart from poorly-managed tourism infrastructures like substandard facilities at Tribhuwan International Airport (TIA), the only international airport of the country, and other problems in handling tourists, weak aviation infrastructure is a prime one, opined Shrestha.
In this light, the NTB has proposed the government to enhance the aviation infrastructure by operating TIA round-the-clock and enabling domestic airline operators to conduct cross border flights across the bordering areas of India.
“Nepal is one of the expensive destinations to visit via air. As such, we are urging the government to take measures that won’t scare any potential outbound tourist from visiting the country,” he informed.
“The idea of cross border flight can go a long way in impelling Indian as well as third country nationals to try Nepal. For this, immigration and customs departments must be constructed in the airports situated in the southern plains of the country,” Shrestha prescribed.
Conducting direct flights to Europe, Japan, southern cities of India, among others, can well also be an important step to enhance air accessibility to Nepal, according to Shrestha.
Of the total proposed tourist arrivals of 1 million, some 700,000 are expected to visit via air and remaining 300,000 by land.
Given this fact, the proposition to upgrade the country’s aviation infrastructure, indeed, makes sense. However, whether the country’s political stability and economic volatility will allow the country’s aviation sector to improve is anybody’s guess.
Since Sri Lanka is also observing 2011 as tourism year, there has been some kind of discomfort amongst Nepali tourism entrepreneurs regarding NTY.
Even though Shrestha did not totally negate this anxiety as absolutely unwarranted, he said that the NTB is looking to convert the competition between the two countries as a complementary factor for both the nations.
“Both Nepal and Sri Lanka are post-conflict nations, politically. In terms of tourism, Sri Lanka has beaches as one of its prime attractions while Nepal boasts of mountains. As such, in order to facilitate both the countries, we are holding dialogue with Kathmandu-based Sri Lankan embassy to conduct air flights between the two countries,” he informed.
Be that as it may, it may not be trotting out old cliché while stating that tourism reserves immense potentials to economically sustain historic political achievement the country has witnessed.
According to a report of World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), with the tourist arrivals of around 50,000 per year in the country, 614,000 people are getting direct and indirect employment. And, if the country begins to receive 1,000,000 tourists, more and more people will get employment opportunities.
“After all, the cardinal aim of the NTY 2011 is to enable the tourism industry to occupy the central stage of economy so that Nepal can gradually shed its image as the least developed country in the world,” Shrestha said.
Leveraging the tourism to the hilt to expedite socio-economic development is, of course, the most promising proposition but, for this, concentrated efforts on the part of every segment of the society are simply mandatory.
Source: nepalnews.com |
