Pulling Tourists

THE declining number of tourists has for some time been sending alarm bells ringing. Starting with Indian Airlines plane hijacking over two years ago, the series of events over the time since then has earned for Nepal a lot of negative publicity internationally. Then terrorist incident in the United States on September 11 last year and its aftermath too had some impact on it. In more recent times since November last year, Maoists’ destructive activities have prompted further harmful media hype against Nepal as a tourist destination. In these times of instantaneous global communications, even small incidents get unreasonably amplified and potential tourists to Nepal who would depend on these communication channels for information would hesitate to make the country their holiday destination, however unfounded the information may be. In order to wage a battle against this negative publicity, the government last year decided that it would launch a Destination Nepal Campaign (DNC). The Campaign is now being put together, albeit not as speedily as the situation would demand—the past three months have witnessed a 50 per cent decrease in the number of tourists compared to the corresponding period last year. Finally, the government Tuesday formally announced programmes for DNC 2002-2003 that had the main objective, according to Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Bal Bahadur K.C., of minimising the negative impact of the present situation on the tourism industry and to stop the decline in tourist arrivals.

The campaign’s main feature is the celebration of the golden jubilee of the first ascent on Mt. Sagarmatha with plans to honour Sagarmatha summiteers and famous foreigners who have contributed to Nepal’s mountain tourism, and to establish a training institution for mountain tourism and mountaineering. Travel trade people and those in the media are also to be invited for familiarisation visit to Nepal. The 22.5 million-rupee Campaign must be launched without delay. For whatever Nepal may be going through now, it still has a lot to offer to tourists who are shying away from Nepal basically because international media have portrayed it in only a negative way. Fighting such an image demands concerted efforts from everybody in the business. If the tourism entrepreneurs and the government work together on it, some of the damage on tourism thanks to negative publicity, could certainly be mitigated. The campaign to pull tourists must be given a continuity for, as suggested, five years as tourism promotion needs, and will need, all the attention the government and tourism entrepreneurs can give it.

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