Visit Nepal Year 2020
As the government has set a target to bring in two million tourists each year by 2020, the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) has planned to organise ‘Visit Nepal Year’ in 2020 to attract more tourists to the country. Unveiling the action plan of the ministry for the next two months, Tourism Minister Jitendra Narayan Dev said that the ministry will establish a secretariat for the Visit Nepal Year shortly to make necessary preparations.
Earlier, the MoCTCA had planned to celebrate Visit Nepal Year in 2018, which was put off due to the delay in construction of airports, heritage sites and roads. The 60-day action plan unveiled today has given due priority to the early completion of the construction and expansion of the international and domestic airports, heritage sites and other tourism infrastructure. The government has planned to complete the expansion of Tribhuvan International Airport and construction of Gautam Buddha Airport in Bhairahawa before the Visit Nepal Year. Likewise, the reconstruction of major heritage sites is expected to be completed before 2020.
In its 60-day plan, MoCTCA has said that it will frame country-wise tourism promotion strategy and bring it into implementation. Country-wise tourism strategy will help the tourism promotion organisations to carry out promotionalactivities to tap potential outbound travellers of concerned countries. Currently, India, China, United States of America, United Kingdom and Sri Lanka are the major source countries of tourists.
In the context of rising number of outbound travellers in India and China, the country wise tourism promotion strategy will help Nepal to tap the outbound travellers of the neighbouring nations. The country will identify the reasons behind low growth in tourist arrivals and take necessary measures to attract more tourists in the country, according to Minister Dev.
He further said that the air service agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and New Zealand will be finalised soon. The action plan also states that MoCTCA will review the air service agreements with Thailand, Japan, Egypt and China, among others.
The ministry will initiate the process to bring strategic partner for Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) — the national flag carrier — and also take forward NAC’s proposal to purchase two more narrow-body aircraft. The business plan submitted by NAC for the commercial operation of two wide-body aircraft that the corporation is in the process of purchasing and its plans regarding human resources will be finalised in the next two months.
The action plan also incorporates plans to amend the Tourism Act to make it more contextual and also plans to amend Casino Regulation, Travel and Trekking Regulation and Mountaineering Expedition Regulation.
chitwan-national-park
Likewise, to bridge the gap in human resources in the tourism sector, which is expected to boom in the future along with the government and private sector’s initiative to achieve robust growth in this sector, Tourism Minister Dev has envisioned to upgrade Nepal Academy of Tourism and Hotel Management to a Tourism University. To establish the Tourism University, the MoCTCA will carry out the necessary groundwork like framing draft law and land acquisition for the university, among others in the next two months.
MoCTCA will also carry out a survey to expand the line agencies of the ministry and the departments to the provincial and local levels. Similarly, it will also frame a master plan for the preservation of tourist sites, as per the action plan unveiled today.
source: The Himalayan Times
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Nepal aims to welcome 1.5 million tourists in 2020 with one third of them coming from China and India, Nepal’s Tourism Ministry has said. The country is set to organize the year 2020 as Visit Nepal Year. It will be the third national level initiative to promote Nepal’s tourism sector since the country first celebrated Visit Nepal Year in 1998 followed by the Nepal Tourism Year in 2011.In 2017, Nepal welcomed 940,218 foreign tourists. It expects a growth of foreign tourists by 30 percent every year since 2018 to meet the target of 1.5 million tourists by 2020. “China and India are two largest source markets for Nepal. But, there is still huge scope of more tourist arrivals from these two neighbours. So, our main focus of promotional activities will be China and India for Visit Nepal Year,” Krishna Prasad Devkota, secretary at the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation said on Tuesday. “We have not set any target of tourist arrivals from China and India for the Visit Nepal Year 2020 so far. But, our tentative estimate is that there will be arrivals of 250,000 each from the two neighboring giants. In 2017, Nepal welcomed 104,664 Chinese and 160,832 Indian tourists.”
Other traditional source markets of Nepal’s tourism are North America and the Europe. However, the country is also planning to explore new source markets including South East Asia and Eastern Europe.“We see great scope of attracting large number of tourists from these new source markets,” said Deepak Raj Joshi, chief executive officer of Nepal Tourism Board, the main tourism promotion body. As the tourism sector is recovering from the twin disasters – deadly earthquake in 2015 and subsequent Indian economic blockade for nearly five months in 2015 and 2016, Nepali government has expected the Visit Nepal Year would be helpful to heavily boost the country’s tourism sector.
As a part of preparation for the Visit Nepal Year, the Nepali government has planned to organize road shows, promoting Nepal in three major cities of China and India in collaboration with tour operators of the two countries. On the other hand, Nepali government has planned to keep Nepal’s only international airport, Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, open for more than 20 hours a day from current 17 hours a day in the next three months. The target is expected to be aided by the possible completion of another international airport, known as Gautam Buddha International Airport which is expected to be completed by 2019, in Bhairahawa, a southwestern town.
Source: Nepal Travel News
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