India’s favourite neighbour country, which witnesses huge inflow of tourists, Nepal is geared to welcome increased arrivals through a consistent 25% growth targeting two million tourists by 2020. In India recently to launch the Visit Nepal Year 2020 campaign, a high profile delegation from the country mingled with members from the travel trade and media disclosing their strategy to achieve the set target. Shradha Shrestha, Manager – Brand Promotion and Corporate Marketing, Nepal Tourism Board shares more with BOTT.
Manju Bala and Shivani Bisht
The Government of Nepal has declared 2020 as the Visit Nepal Year with a target to achieve two million arrivals in daily spend of over $75. Visit Nepal 2020 is positioned as a lifetime Experience irk a bid to position Nepal as one of the world’s most unique experiential and lifetime value destination. The Visit Nepal Year 2020 will act as catalyst to achieving the government agenda to recognise and accelerate the development of the high potential of the tourism industry in the years to come even as the government creates ease at doing business for investors and stakeholders with incentives and subsidy provisions, supportive policies, political stability and sound governance.
“This is the first official launch of our ‘VN 2020’ campaign which we are doing in India, in Delhi. India is our main source market and remains the number one country in terms of tourist arrivals. There are about 100,000 visitors from India to Nepal every year. The tourist demographics coming from India to Nepal comprises mainly of families or people belonging to religious segments. But now we want to target the younger crowd, the millennials who can indulge in adventure activities, which are offered in plenty in Nepal. Besides families, which continues to remain our important target segment, we are also aiming at attracting people from high-end-spend category who would like to come to Nepal for a luxury holiday. We are diversifying our segments in these ways besides few others,” shares Shradha Shrestha.
The high-profile delegation from Nepal visited New Delhi this time but will be going to Kolkata in July followed by Bengaluru and Mumbai, showing their commitment to the India market. Visit Nepal 2020 is Nepal’s promise to improve its competitiveness through investment, innovation, infrastructure development, regulatory reform, new product offerings, environment and wildlife conservation in greater efficiencies and excellence in service standards with the objective of developing the tourism industry as a key economy development strategy of the country.
Talking about the offerings of Nepal and expanding its image from that of a Casino destination, Shradha said, “The casinos have been a very popular tourist attraction for some of the categories of Indians, but that is not the only thing we want to promote in Nepal. This time we are coming up with the diversification of products and want to highlight various other touristy points of our destination, such as trekking, shopping, luxury and more. There is so much more that Nepal has to offer than just casinos.”
This campaign is also important as this happens to be the first international campaign that Nepal has launched after the catastrophic earthquake that shook its tourism industry in 2015. This is perhaps their way of saying that the recovery period is over and Nepal is back to bouncing on its feet again.
Among the many dignitaries at the event were Suraj Vaidya, National Convenor, Visit Nepal 2020 and Deepak Raj Joshi, Chief Executive Officer, Nepal Tourism Board.
Commenting on the growing number of travellers from India to Nepal, SanJeet, Director, Buzz Travel Marketing India, says, “The Indian market continues to be one of the most important contributors of international visitors to Nepal. Over the years, there has been a steady increase in both MICE and FIT movement to Nepal from India, a trend that led to the double-digit growth in arrivals in the previous year.”
