Promotion and Marketing of New Tourism Products

By RABI JUNG PANDEY

Together with centuries old festive events amid exquisite architectural glories of the pagoda and stupas as cultural heritage, Nepal is equally rich in magnificent landscape and range of snow capped lofty mountains with natural flora and fauna. It has been evident that Nepal has attracted visitors predominantly by these natural and cultural beauties together with variety of trekking and mountaineering options. It will be customary to say that the magnificent diverse landscapes have bestowed to the rapid growth of tourism in terms of both their diversity and distinctiveness.

Despite immense potentialities for tourism growth and market, Nepal still lacks the regional equivalence in tourism development and income distribution. Tourism concentration in few areas and in few popular trekking routes has restricted the market, causing economic disparities among peoples of inherent destinations.

Realizing the fact that like any other economic activity, tourism has also considered to be managed by both public and private sectors in accordance with sound marketing principles in order to make it more productive. Effort on marketing has not simply tried to inform prospective tourists about what Nepal can offer, but also has induced potential tourists to visit the country. This is the reason why efforts on marketing is taking place with proper planning, understanding it as part of the overall tourism planning process, and as it relates to development of tourism product.

While on following the overall marketing process for the Nepalese tourism products, still there lie more opportunity for further improvements in the overall marketing management process that need to be followed by the national tourism organization (NTO) and tour operators. Still, much attention need to be focused on some activities, that includes, establishing the marketing objectives; formulating the product based marketing strategy; preparing and implementing the promotion program; and providing tourist information services. Looking at the present trend followed by other tourism developed countries and their NTOs, it gives feeling that marketing planning done for both international and domestic tourists or a combination of these are planned in a scientific manner or in a holistic approach.

In many countries, tourism at present has been identified as the most promising industry and effort has also seen to be made to attract more tourist adding new tourist products and services. For this reason, the best practices from these countries can be learned as lessons for further coordination and better understanding to put emphasis on the facilities and products developed in Nepal by various development programs including that of Tourism for Rural Poverty Alleviation Program (TRPAP). Such practices simply does not help country to cope to receive the regional up ward trend but also facilitates to develop further coordination and make the overall marketing planning process more efficient.

His Majesty’s Government of Nepal looks more determined to augment tourist arrivals by conducing liberal policies to attract more tourists and encouraging more private sectors to come forward in this venture. The futures of Nepalese tourist market will increasingly dependent upon the contentment that could cater to visitors with safe, clean and attractive environments for the use of the facilities and services provided. The scale nature and geography of attractions will continue to be particularly dynamic as more existing events, techniques and venues are utilized. Hence, it has been increasingly recognized that the maintenance of high quality environment, including out look of the area, hygiene toilets and facilities and safe handling is crucial to accomplish visitor satisfaction. The land of diversity Nepal has a vast opportunity to diverge tourists on attractions, many of which are still to be explored. Divergence and extension of tourism sector activities all over the country need more endeavor to stimulate tourists to visit the place. Moreover, the international tour operators should be well conversant about the new product, so that they could launch it in their forthcoming package. In addition, locally tourist standard accommodation facilities have to be developed, and the most salient feature is that the local entrepreneurs should be encouraged.

Mid and Far western Regions of Nepal have various attractions including numerous snow ranges, alpine valleys, lakes, national parks and a multitude of distinct cultures. By way of contrast, these regions are most sluggish in terms of socio-economic development that tourism could have yield.

Among the conspicuous reasons why these regions are least visited by tourists include - the marketers who are not paying much interest to promote these sectors; very few entrepreneurial activities that are found to exist because of lack of infrastructure and promotional activities; and moreover, much of the places in the west remain unexplored. In addition, eight of the existing fourteen summits in the world, which exceed an altitude of 8000 meters including Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest), Kanchanjunga, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho-Oyo, Dhaulagiri, Manaslu and Annapurna lies in east and central part of Nepal.

The lack of external promotional activity could be justified by analyzing the tourists arrivals within the country. Tourism that is the highly competitive industry, where it is a case of survival of the fittest, the other giant neighboring countries appear to be the regions' winner.

However, Nepal has yet to capitalize the uniqueness the country possesses, especially the natural attractions of the mid and far western regions which can be designated as: River tourism, Rural tourism, Cultural tourism, Pilgrimage tourism, Forest and Wildlife tourism. Attention has to be given that attraction industry has been looked-out as one of the most exciting and challenging sectors in the tourist industry all over the world. The lesson from Europe and North America has to be learned where the main growth in international tourism is because of efficient marketing planning process followed by both NTOs and private sectors and the higher numbers of attractions available in the regions.

Attractions that are the prime components of an area’s tourism product, must perceive, develop, and manage to meet the demands, needs and interest of the visitor with proper marketing procedures. TRPAP has done some efforts to promote its newly developed products and services directly taking part in the international event markets such as ITB in Berlin (March, 2005) and WTM in London (November, 2005) simply to facilitate the local tour operators to market these products and services. It has to be understood that with the advancement of technology, the concept of mass tourism has found to bring revolution in the field of tourism industry. However, there could have been many reasons to travel, but choosing a destination would be due to efficient and effective marketing means, which could provide positive benefits to both tourists and the local communities and ultimately contributing for regional development.

(The author is director of the Tourism for Rural Poverty Alleviation Program. The article is courtesy of TRPAP-Rural Tourism Feature)