Tourism experts have stressed the need to promote cross-border tourism to establish link between neighboring countries and exploit their tourism potentials.
They said Nepal, Bhutan, India and Tibet Autonomous Region of China should develop common tourism products to bring more tourists to the region.
Prachanda Man Shrestha, founder chairman of National Tourism Foundation (NTF), said together we can identify niche tourism products that the global market is looking for. "While focusing on tourism, we should focus on values with essence of novelty. As the Himalayan range has common culture, history, legend and nature, new products can be explored in the Himalayan countries," Shrestha, who is the former CEO of Nepal Tourism Board (NTB), said.
In the past, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh had taken initiative to develop common tourism products under the South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) program with the support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Rup Narayan Rai, chairman of Sikkim Tourism Development Corporation, said new concepts and ideas are always welcomed in the tourism sector. "To maximize the benefit of working together, the security part has to be addressed carefully," he added.
Shrestha agreed with Rai and said that multi-country tour products always face complexity as each nation is different in terms of doing things, governance and involving business and industries, among others. "For the promotion of multi-country tour products, accessibility has to be ensured, be it by land or air, tourism facilitation should be made smooth so that people can move freely without any fear, and need of synchronization is very important so that all the industry stakeholders can come together," added Shrestha.
Govinda Bahadue Karki, director general of Department of Tourism, said effective mobilization of local resources, infrastructure development, and fostering better relation among people are of utmost importance for the promotion of cross-border tourism.
Bikram, Pandey, one of the founders of NTF, said that a new product connecting Lhasa, Kathmandu, Thimpu/Paro and Sikkim can be developed.
Nepal Tourism News Source: Myrepublica
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