Kathmandu, March 28:

Though Nepal is known as a unique tourist destination with sublime scenery, natural grandeurs of the size of Mount Everest and religious cites like Lord Buddha’s birthplace and Pashupatinath, the country has not been able to achieve commensurate tourist numbers.

Having felt the necessity to compete in the international tourism market with innovative ideas, Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) launched a new tourism brand ‘Naturally Nepal - Once is Not Enough’.

The new brand was launched at ITB Berlin, Germany on March 11,2006.

Tek Bahadur Dangi, chief executive officer at NTB, who has been at the helm of affairs directing Nepal’s quest for more tourists, spoke to The Himalayan Times about the new brand.

He said the brand has been launched after a meticulous research and it incorporates an entire spectrum of tourism products and services that Nepal offers. The new marketing strategy aims at providing Nepal a new avenue to promote and market its tourism products in the crowded international market, he said.

“Earlier we did not have any professional brand. But now with the launch of the new brand, we aim at placing Nepal at the international market by repositioning the country’s image,” Dangi said, adding that the country has witnessed fair increment in tourist numbers despite the prevailing conflict.

“To inform tourists that Nepal is a safe destination, we have been inviting foreign journalists here and asking them to report about Nepal, which has been fruitful in recent times,” Dangi said.

Dangi suggested a pyramidical approach to increase tourist arrivals in Nepal. Conflict is on the top of the pyramid. Inadequate flights of national carriers linking Nepal to other parts of the world and government’s failing to encourage foreign airlines to come to Nepal make up the other two layers of the pyramid. Finding new tourist destinations and encouraging national and international investment and increasing the tourism budget make the two bottom layers.

Dangi said that the number of tourists coming to Nepal is increasing steadily. “If we look at tourist arrival figures, tourist arrivals in Nepal have been very good till 1999 and but since 2000 the figure significantly decreased till 2002. But since then, there is a growing trend and we must make this trend consistent,” Dangi added.

The tourism sector witnessed a huge investment when there was a very good growth rate but as conflict escalated and the number of tourists declined, the sector could not achieve the expected rate of return. This is the reason industry players claim that their business is not doing well, Dangi said.

Dangi seems very optimist that the new brand of international standard would help place Nepal on the global map of tourism and it would be able to compete in the international market 5 to 10 years down the line.