Since the beginning of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak, the private sector, the Government Bodies and key stakeholders are designing and implementing a series of measures to reduce the risk the cases and control contraction of the virus.
As the situation has deteriorated globally, this case has already created the biggest threat not only in the health sector but also in challenging businesses, livelihoods and daily life of human beings.
Over the decades we have witnessed the history that crisis has also limited life. It can’t go forever. Many experts have believed that by the end of July 2020 this pandemic will remarkably come under control. Let’s be hopeful and pray for the control of this pandemic at earliest.
Tourism is the economy that evolves from the people’s movement from one place to another. Since the world is under lockdown and peoples movement is in halt, the first and the hardest-hit industry is the travel and tourism. Undoubtedly, Nepal is also not untouched by the impact of this. Tourism is one of the few vulnerable industries in the world and at the same time, it is one of the most resilient industries too.
In this context, Nepal should put its hard effort for the survival of the industry and need to be prepared for the quickest recovery when CoVID-19 Outbreak comes under control. Nepal, now, needs a special task force/committee, concrete strategy, and result-oriented action plan. Let’s focus our effort coming together with a clear-cut SRT(“Survive-Revive-Thrive”)Strategy to fight against this mega-crisis.
During and after every crisis effective collaboration and communication is key. With the vision to Position Nepal as the world’s one of the purest, pristine, peaceful, safe, happy and healing destination we have to gear-up to Unleash Nepal’s huge tourism potential for the sustainable development of the country by growing Nepal’s inbound international tourism arrivals.
Inspire Nepal’s tourism industry to develop, promote and sell extraordinary experiential tourism products. This involves engaging with multi-sector industries and the departments of the Government of Nepal to leverage Nepal’s reputation as a unique, high-quality destination. And, without any hesitation or reservation, we have to create synergies among all the efforts of key players implementing SRT (Survival, Revival, Thrival) Strategy.
We need to set some guidelines and protocols to follow strictly from the industry, massive training programs to be fit to handle the tourism in the post-Covid-19 context and encourage innovation that helps us accelerate speedily by adopting new norm.
The whole tourism sector, public and private, need to focus on 2020 as a year of survival of the industry and 2021 to revive the business and 2022 to thrive bouncing back better and wider.
After every crisis, there are four segments that always help the industry to quickly recover the business. One is the domestic segment, where a traveller has quick confidence and easy to connect with. Second is the Niche Segment, in which the travellers are motivated by strong desire and passion to travel to the destination/activity that they love the most. The third segment is the Business/Corporate Segment, in which a kind of compulsion is there that drives to travel to widen their business. And fourth is the Pilgrimage segment – in which a strong faith and belief push to travel to the destination.
Similarly, five markets move to widen after crisis starting from domestic to neighbouring to regional to short-haul to long-haul markets in a phase-wise basis. Tourism industry leaders should be engaged to create key-messages and materials and connect with these segments and markets without any delay to revive faster from this pandemic.
