Tourism revenues will be down 40 percent in the next 12 months and 20 percent in the next 24, according to the government's Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA). Eighty percent of hotel bookings for the spring season have been cancelled. These are tough times for hoteliers and travel agents, among the 600,000 Nepalis involved in the sector. They need all the help they can get. This time, this help has come from the most unlikely source: the political parties. In the choppy waters of transitional Nepal, the contribution of political parties to tourism has been mostly negative. The frequent strikes and shutdowns they imposed was a big deterrent for would-be tourists. Others would land in Nepal only to learn that their travel plans had been thrown into disarray as a result of an anti-government shutdown announced overnight. All the major parties have at various times committed not to impose such disruptive strikes, but to no avail. Thus the new joint concept paper of the three biggest political parties in the country—Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and UCPN (Maoist)—on the recovery of tourism after the Great Earthquake comes as a breath of fresh air.The concept paper, prepared after a month-long brainstorming, points at seven sets of remedial measures to get more tourists to visit Nepal. These include, among other things, informing the outside world that our tourism destinations are safe; expansion and diversification of tourism products and services; repair, reconstruction and reopening of damaged tourism infrastructure; and favorable role of political parties. Many of their suggestions are sensible. For instance it makes no sense to label Kathmandu as 'crisis zone' while at the same time reopening many of its World Heritage Sites. Such arbitrary labels have only confused would-be travelers, the paper says. The concept paper is also bang on when it suggests increasing the annual budget set aside for tourism, a measly 0.6 percent of total budget this year (tourism currently contributes over four percent to national GDP, with a promise of a lot more). Another sensible proposal is to provide government employees with "Tourism Promotion Incentive" to encourage them to travel more inside the country. Prompt repairs of the partially damaged trekking routes before September, the start of the trekking season, is another sensible (if obvious) proposal. Since the concept paper has been prepared in consultations with tourism entrepreneurs, most of their concerns have been included in it. But will something good actually come out of it?
Again, irrespective of what happens with its suggestions, it's good to see the Big Three take the initiative to prepare a joint concept paper on tourism. Moreover, they have felt the necessity of analyzing the impact of their own actions on tourism industry. Such introspection was long overdue. They need not do much. If they cannot do something good for promotion of tourism, they should at least do no harm. If only all our political actors renounce disruptive strikes as a means of protest, in practice, they would have already made a huge contribution to reviving tourism.
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