BUSINESS & ECONOMY

NICA’s way to make MICE nice

By A Staff Reporter

Tourists visiting for Meeting, Incentives, Conference and Exhibition (MICE) have a very important role in the development of the tourism industry of a country. In the past few years, many countries in the world have concentrated their focus on the MICE tourism.

With the establishment of Nepal Incentive and Convetion Association (NICA), Nepal has also started its effort to develop MICE tourism in the country. Nepal’s exotic, intriguing, mystic, beautiful climate, and peaceful connotation in the outside world may provide a lot of chances for winning the position of one of the most favourite MICE destinations in the world. 

As MICE tourism has no seasonality bottleneck and that it brings in high yield tourists, Nepal must work hard to capture this segment of tourists, said Yognedra Sakya, NICA President, while addressing an interaction programme on “Potential of MICE in Nepalese Tourism” organized by NICA on the occasion of its third anniversary.

“There is an immense potential of MICE in Nepalese tourism,” Sakya said and added, “the travel trade entreprenuers, the professional conferene operators ad the government should come together to take this opportunity.”

Realising the importance of MICE in Nepalese tourism, NICA was established three years ago with the joint efforts of the then Department of Tourism, RNAC, Hotels, Travel Agents, Tour Operators and Professional Conferene Organisors, President Sakya informed.

In 1998 altogether 463,684 tourists visited Nepal. Of these, according to the datas provided by the then Department of Tourism almost eleven percent visitors were MICE tourists.

“But what is interesting is that experts in the travel industry claim that the revenue from this 11 percent is almost equal to the reveue from the 24 percent of Adventure tourists that came to visit the country,” Sakya pointed out.

Since its inception, NICA has been lobbying with the government and private sector to enhance facilities for MICE tourism. This includes simplifying the procedure for immigration and custom clearance etc. It has also actively participating in MICE promotion fairs suh as EIBTM.

Beside that, it is also mobilizig Nepalese professionals and their organizations by taking the entire burden of bidding, partial funding for the bidding, and co-ordinating, organizing the event on behalf of the hosts.

Presenting a paper on “MICE, NICA and you”, Rajendra Bahadur Shrestha, Director, Bidding and Convention unit at the NICA, said that the development of MICE tourism will help minimize Nepal’s seasonality problem during the low tourist inflow months from May to September.

E-commerce does not need IT wizards

By Prerna K. Mishra

When Manchaben was honoured with the craftsmen award, she could have called it the geatest day of her life. But, for this lady, holed up in Khin — a sleepy hamlet in Kutch — the big day arrived when she received her first overseas order through the Net. She now makes ties, with tie and dye and mirror work, for a US tie major. And you guessed it right. She doesn’t know how to distinguish a computer mouse from the rodent. All this was mediated through peoplelink.org, the site dedicated to promoting tribal interests. Manchaben’s experience spills the first myth associated with e-commerce. An entreprenuer does not have to be an IT wizard to sell his ware on the Net.

In fact, this is just one of the misconceptions associated with electronic trade. There are many more taht surfaced during various interactive sessions held at the IT Asia 2000, jointly organized by Confederation of Indian Industry and the Manufacturers Association for Information Technology, between February 8 - 11.

Most businessmen, for instance, feel that only the Fords of the world can afford it. Not true. Even small-time businessmen can harness the net to their advantage. Ask the seven Moradabad-based brassware exporters, for whom orders have already started trickling down the net. In January, NASSCOM created websites for each of them. “To the utter disgust of the middlemen sitting in Delhi, these exporters are making almost double the money by exporting the wares to the Middle East directly through firght agents. A sale of a hookah, for instance, that used to fetch them 70 dirhams earlier, get them 120 dirhams now,” points out Dewang Mehta, Executive Director, NASSCOM. And certainly if Mumbai-based Sheetal Departmental Stores can go on thenet with NRI’s ordering bridal costume for their daughters online, so can you, irrespective of your size.

Another myth associated with e-com is that companies who have made huge investments in IT are the ones ready to jump on to the e-commerce bandwagon. As a matter of fact, considering the legacies to bog them down, they have a more daunting task ahead. And if the deployment of IT has been senseless and compartmentalised, they have a bigger mess to handle. According to Vasanth Kumar, CEO and Director, Strategic Planning, Ranbaxy Labs Ltd., even though most companies have the infrastructure in place, bridging the gap between traditional and digital processes does not come easy.

Hotel workers to launch protest

By A Staff Reporter

The central committee members of Nepal Independent Hotel Workers’ Union (NIHWU) has announced to initiate movement to press for the fulfillment of their demands. The Union had been demanding for the ten percent service charge to the hotel workers.

In a press conferene organized yesterday, members of the Union informed about the detail of their protest programmes. “Our movemet will ontinue till our demands will be fulfilled,” Indra Raj Sitaula, Seretary of the Union said.