On The Occasion Of The World Tourism Day
Nepal’s Tourism Industry Rescuing It From Crisis

By Shirish B. Pradhan

"TOURISM: a tool for peace and dialogue among civilizations" is coined this year’s theme for the World Tourism Day. In fact, peace is the basic prerequisite for the survival of tourism, one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Tourism teaches human beings to be more friendly towards other people, animals and the nature itself. It does not only acquaint us with different places, people and cultures around the world but also facilitates interaction among different civilizations.

Tourism is one of the mainstays of the Nepalese economy and employs more people directly or indirectly than any other industry in the country. But the major foreign exchange earning industry of the country has suffered the worst set back in the year 2001 due to the internal and external reasons and the situation is unlikely to improve until the second half of the year 2002, predict tourism experts. The six year long Maoist insurgency has done a great damage to the tourism industry creating a feeling of insecurity among the tourists and tourism entrepreneurs. Now the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the US cities has further worsened the situation. Many international groups, mainly Americans and Europeans have cancelled their hotel bookings, says. Hotel Association of Nepal (HAN) President, adding the present situation is the worst in the history of Nepalese tourism industry. The cancellations will affect tourist business till the middle of the year 2002, say tourism entrepreneurs. This year’s tourist season saw as low as 20 percent average hotel occupancy in contrast with previous year’s 70 to 75 percent occupancy.

To compensate this Nepal needs to explore new possibilities and launch aggressive marketing strategy, suggest tourism experts. There is an urgent need to explore new markets in the wake of growing tension between the United States and Afghanistan as a result of the recent terrorist attack in the US cities. Nepal, sandwiched between two giant Asian neighbours with the combined population of more than 2 billion, one third of humanity, need not worry about the future of our tourism, if we know how to tackle the situation. The middle class population of India, which can afford traveling, is more than the total population of entire Europe. But due to our weak marketing strategy and publicity we are getting only a small portion of the Indian tourists. Similarly, we have not made efforts to exploit the Chinese market, a source of a large number of holiday makers.

The Indian tourists who used to occupy 50 per cent share of the international visitors, have declined in the aftermath of the hijacking of an Indian Airlines jetliner, which originated its flight from Kathmandu. But no special effort has been made to raise the confidence of the Indian tourists and incidents like the Rithik Roshan episode has only worsened the situation further. However, no serious effort has so far been made to boost our image in the Indian market. Neither the government nor the private sector seems serious in exploring the ever-growing Indian market.

China could be another major tourist market for Nepal, which may help compensate the loss caused by possible US strikes against Afghanistan in its anti-terrorist move. But Nepal does not have any tourism agreement with China, the world’s most populated country. The signing of a comprehensive tourism agreement between Nepal and China will definitely help in tourism growth. The agreement may lead to a breakthrough in opening up new areas for the tourism potentials. At present Nepal doesn’t have airlinks with the Chinese cities other than Shanghai. As such Nepal should extend air links with the Chinese cities like Beijing, Lhasa and Xian in order to promote Chinese tourists.

The Nepal Tourism Board, established with the objectives of developing professionalism in tourism and launching an aggressive marketing campaign in international tourism market has not been able to perform up to the expectations. The board lacks proper vision as well as aggressive marketing strategy. The government is also not making any serious effort to rescue tourism industry from the present catastrophe. In such a situation, the objectives of the proposed Destination Nepal Year 2002 cannot be achieved, point out tourism experts. The tourism sector is passing through a serious set back and without necessary preparation, the launching of the Destination Nepal Year will only be the wastage of time and money.

Nearly four years have passed since we observed Visit Nepal Year 1998, which to some extent, helped in exposing Nepal to the international tourism market. There is a need to keep up the momentum gained during the VNY if we are to boost our tourism industry.

The present scenario of tourism industry is not so encouraging. Tourist arrival upto August this year has decreased by 6.51 percent as compared to the tourist arrival last year in the corresponding period. According to the latest data, in total 200,208 tourists arrived by air during the first eight months in 2001 including 47,234 Indian tourists. If we look at the monthly tourist arrivals, there was an increase in number of tourists from January to March as compared to previous year. The number began declining from April to August, with the exception of slight increase in May. The month of June, when the Royal tragedy occurred, registered the lowest number of tourists in the year.

In fact, Nepal has tremendous potentiality to become one of the prime tourist destinations in the world. Our cultural and natural heritage, wildlife species, lofty mountains, scenic beauty, and a number of activities for tourists make the country one of the unique tourist destinations. What we lack are proper infrastructures, foreign and private investment in tourism, sound tourism policy, organized efforts and aggressive campaign. In today’s world tourists choice and their preferences are also changing. Thus, we must keep in touch with the latest travel trends and be equipped with all the modern facilities a tourist would seek in order to compete with the relatively new tourist destinations like Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Hong Kong.

If Singapore can attract tourists double of its population and if a tiny island Hong Kong can lure some 8 to 9 million tourists a year why cannot Nepal treasured with unique natural gift benefit from the industry?

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