Lalitpur, October 30:

Patan Museum will soon introduce special package programmes for foreigners and local students with a view to attracting more visitors to the museum.

According to the museum, only 10,000 tourists visited the museum though 46,000 entered the Lalitpur sub-Metropolitan City and 0.21 million tourists came to the Valley in the year 2004-05.

Keeping in view the inconvenience faced by tourists, who have to pay entrance fees to visit various sites of Patan, we have come up with some package programmes, said museum director Bhim Prasad Nepal.

“The programme for foreign visitors will include the entrance fee of Patan, Patan Museum, the Golden Temple and lunch at Hotel Summit” the director said. “We hope this will encourage tourists to visit the museum and raise its revenue collection,” he added.

“The revenue collected as entrance fees will definitely help in the museum’s operations and maintenance. The more visitors it attracts, the more profitable,” Nepal said.

The entrance fee at the museum is Rs 250 and Rs 10 for foreigners and locals respectively. Since its inauguration in 1997, the museum has recorded 0.35 million visitors and only one third (0.13 million) of them were foreigners.

“The record shows that the number of visitors is rising each year, but the number of foreign visitors is not increasing,” Nepal said.

“As for the local package, we have designed it to educate and inform young people about the culture, history and architecture of our country,” said Nepal, adding “We will coordinate with the schools to implement the package.”