Shifting from ‘Sustainable’ Tourism to ‘Sustaining’ Tourists Influx in Nepal

By SUBAS DHAKAL

Tourism has no doubt contributed to the welfare of Nepal as a reliable vehicle for diversifying the sources of income for the local people up until the millennium. At one period in time, increasing trend of tourists’ arrival even raised a concern about its sustainability because of the fear that excessive tourism activities would have adverse consequences on integrity of cultural and natural heritages. However, with the unfolding of a new millennium, ongoing insurgency began to take its toll on what was once a thriving tourism sector. Consequently, attention has now shifted from concern over ‘sustainability’ of tourism to somehow or rather anyhow ‘sustain’ the influx of tourists. A recent announcement of government’s move to seek aid of diplomatic missions abroad in what seems to be the desperate yet superficial move to revive the tourism sector reflects such shift. It somehow completely overlooks the basic marketing strategy of tourism promotion based on investigating local, national and global scale trend with appropriate multi criteria scenario analysis of events unfolding at all scales. It’s apparent that such analysis was foregone as it would take much more concrete research efforts than simply budging responsibility towards diplomatic missions under two major postulates. First one assumes that prospective tourists would largely be unaware of the escalated violence and recent political development of the country. Second one presumes that prospective tourists will rather believe murky analysis of the country’s security put forward by the diplomatic mission instead of widely accessible independent media coverage.

One need not to be a tourism expert to say that these hypotheses are doomed from the conceptual stage and have a trivial chance of success, if any, to increase the tourist’s arrival. Root cause of such expected failure is the lopsided assessment of m agnitude of conflict’s impact by the promoters. It’s pretty much similar to the circumstantial assessment of residents of Kathmandu preventing themselves or anyone they know from visiting Kalikot compared to the assessment of local residents who are compelled to return to normalcy after a major tragic event. In that milieu, it’s natural for the promoters inside Nepal to portray the situation as non-threatening but not so to believe that large number of prospective tourists will completely ignore the travel advisory posted by their own governments. Therefore, task of increasing number of tourists appears colossal for diplomatic mission because root cause of such slack is not the art of promotion. If it was, Nepal has received enough publicity (most of them being negative) since the palace massacre to the palace takeover only to worsen the tourist influx. It is worth remembering here that London School of Economics scholar - Eric Neumayer recently published his research findings indicating that increase in human rights violation as well as an institutionalization of autocratic regime has devastating affect on tourism world wide.

Such finding certainly rings a bell in this South Asian region often portrayed as zone of intensified armed conflicts having noxious affect on tourism. To overcome such snag, Ceylon Tourist Board (CTB) known for its holistic and sustainable strategy invested a huge amount of time and efforts towards clarifying negative perception of prospective tourists. However, with the availability of much safer destinations unaffected by conflict compared to that of Nepal, CTB finally came to conclusion that reviving tourism in Sri Lanka does not solely depend on flashy promotions but rather on peace and stability. This highlights the issue of ‘image’ being vital to entice tourists rather than publicity stunts. It’s beyond the scope of this article to portray the ‘image’ of prospective visitors to Nepal . However, it is expected to be similar to that of a lecturer in a reputed Thai university who cancelled his 10 days visit to Nepal earlier this year and instead traveled to India because: according to him ‘conflict alone was not the major factor to change destination because even Thailand has similar problems in the south’. He adds, ‘but why should I pay your government a visa fee and royalty to see the Mt. Everest when I know that they will use the revenue only to limit the fundamental rights of people’?

Without properly addressing such apprehension of prospective tourists’ worldwide, how can diplomatic missions be expected to have a positive affect on tourists’ arrival in upcoming peak tourism season? Furthermore, diplomatic missions themselves have a reputation for being barely proactive towards the welfare of citizens abroad. Promotion of tourism without adequate manpower and laudable strategy as well as accountability as a tour agency seems highly unrealistic. It is not to say that idea of utilizing already existing institution towards attracting tourists is not a welcome move. It certainly is. Yet, without identifying the need of appropriate market research especially in the area of tourist’s perception, their willingness to pay for visiting Nepalese destinations and characteristics of tourists that are willing to take a risk to visit Nepal (if any) under the existing circumstances, outcomes of such move would be ambiguous. Announcement to involve missions abroad therefore seems to be inspired by m yopic targets and hasty approach bypassing thorough analysis of market making it another expenditure spree of already cash-stricken country. Why? Because increasing the mere number of tourists by few hundred this season alone is not going to revive the tourism sector. What country needs is a long term vision and strategy to sustain, if not increase, the number of tourists from half a million/year level.

In order to increase the number of tourists, it is unclear at this stage that whether policies guided by sustainability should be ignored for short term benefits or not. On the other hand, it is clear that the root cause of slack in tourist arrival is the negative image of the country, which is impossible for diplomatic mission to alter under political state of affairs. It is eminent that such image is not going to change overnight simply by providing a link in a NTB website containing an article about Nepal being safe for tourists despite of Maoist rebellion. Sustaining tourists’ influx requires more substantiated and holistic efforts of an entire nation. Uprising civil society pressuring for the earliest reconciliation of all political forces to stop further bloodshed can be seen as a part of sustainable strategy towards preventing further slump of country’s economy and reviving the tourism sector.

(Author is a graduate student at Faculty of Environment and Resources Studies in Mahidol University , Thailand . He can be contacted at subasdhakal@gmail.com