In a bid to attract more foreign tourists to the country and make Nepal Tourism Year (NTY) 2011 campaign a grand success; MoTCA has proposed the government to waive visa fee at least for the campaign period. [break]
Nepal has set a target to welcoming more than one million foreign tourists in 2011. More than half a million foreign visitors had visited the country in 2009.
Laxman Bhattarai, spokesperson and joint secretary at MoTCA, said the proposal have been forwarded to Ministry of Finance (MoF) to incorporate it in the budget for fiscal year 2010/11. He informed myrepublica.com that the proposal to introduce free-visa regime was worked out by the Nepal Tourism Year 2011 National Coordination Committee.
“Private sector in the tourism industry has also been putting pressure on us to boost up the number of foreign national visitors to the country Nepal," Bhattarai said.
A source at MoTCA said the Finance Ministry is positive on the proposal about introducing free-visa regime in 2011.
At present, foreign visitors need to pay $25 as visa for 15 days and $40 for a month. But visitors from SAARC countries get visa free of cost. The government collects around Rs 200 million as revenue from visa fee.
“By introducing free-visa regime, we want to bring in more visitors to the country,” the source at MoTCA told myrepublica.com. “The term ´free´ makes positive impact on people. We hope to welcome more visitors by putting in place free-visa regime,” he added.
As a part of attracting more visitors to the country, the government has already offered free visa to Everest summiteers for two years.
Many countries like Thailand has adopted free-visa regime to resurrect their tourism image and welcome more visitors.
“Free visa system will have positive impact among prospective tourists coming to Nepal,” said Yogendra Shakya, national coordinator of NTY 2011 campaign. “Free visa will become one of the most effective promotional gimmicks for the country,” he said, adding, “But we also need to focus on marketing and promotion.”
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