NATIONAL7 (Spotlight Weekly)]

More Talks, Less Business

The participants in one of the biggest travel trade meeting were more interested in eco-tourism conference than in business

By A CORRESPONDENT

The above 250 delegates from 29 countries who participated in the 12th Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Eco-Tourism Conference and Mart left an interesting impression among observers in Pokhara earlier this week.

Considering the fact that most of the participants represented the business community, they should have, obviously, participated more actively in the travel mart than in the eco-tourism conference.

But it was the other way round. There were more enthusiastic attendants in the conference that comprised of several break-out sessions and outdoor visits. Those who presented their papers during the different sessions ranged from key note speaker Dr, Harka Gurung, a noted scholar, to successful tour operators from Nepal and abroad.

The audience were seen actively interacting with paper presenters even when there were technical problems like power cut for slide showing, among others. When Dr. Gurung delivered his key note speech -- based on the theme minimum impact maximum experience --more than half of his slides could not be shown due to technical failure.

Yet, the large number of participants that had gathered at the ball room of Fulbari Resort in Pokhara maintained pin-drop silence listening attentively to what Gurung had to say. Same was the case with other presenters.

When Pradeep Raj Pandey, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Nepal Tourism Board, began his presentation he found his laptop computer was out of order and so he was not able to make his slide-presentations. Yet, his presentation was equally lively thanks to the volleys of questions from the audience.

One and a half day later, when the conference was over, tents were set on the sprawling ground of the Fulbari Resort for the Adventure Travel mart. But even before the mart began, there were some bad signals. Joeph A. Mclnerney, Chief Executive Officer of PATA, told a press meet that the there were more sellers than buyers in the travel mart.

More than 60 sellers had arrived in the scenic valley of Pokhara while there were hardly 40 buyers. Worse still, not all the buyers turned up at the mart. Many sellers could be seen sitting outside their tents awaiting their clients. Very few of them were inside their tents dealing with their customers.

Each seller was allowed to spend 20 minutes with the buyers in one round. After a few minutes break, the buyers were supposed to move into other tents according to their pre-set appointments by the PATA office.

"I tried to set new appointments for tomorrow (the second day of the mart) but I found that most of the buyers had scheduled to depart," said one Sri Lankan tour operator who had arrived here as a seller.

Most of the Nepalese sellers were sitting idle outside their tents with no business around. Of course, they had tried their best to decorate their space to beckon customers but there were hardly any of the latter to visit them.

So, what happened? Knowledgeable sources say, many of the visitors, supposed to be buyers at the 12th PATA Travel Mart, cancelled their arrivals in Nepal after the Indian Airlines' flight 814 was hijacked on December 24 last year.

Immediately after the hijack, the Indian Airlines cancelled all its Kathmandu-bound flights. The Indian national flag carrier brought in significant number of tourists -- after the Royal Nepal Airlines Corporation that flies in 40 percent of the inbound tourists.