Press Release – Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Nepal Chapter in collaboration with Visit Nepal Year 2020 and Nepal Tourism Board has launched the historical and first-of-its-kind Nepal India China Expo (NICE) – a noble concept envisioned by PATA Nepal Chapter as the first tri-nation tourism expo, bringing together tourism and hospitality stakeholders and organizations from public and private sectors of the three neighbouring countries namely: Nepal, India and China, on a single platform by facilitating all three nations with unparalleled networking and business opportunities, industry insights and inspiration.

Nepal is rightly and geopolitically placed between the two giant economies and can contribute hugely in bridging tourism development potentials of these countries which, have arranged bilateral trade but, have never organized a tri-nation’s event. The main objective of this expo is to bring together the two emerging giant economies and tourism powerhouses – India and China to foster the untapped tourism potentials and integrated business opportunities with Nepal as a facilitator. NICE aims to further help to consolidate the relationship between the three countries, focusing mainly in the field of tourism and hospitality.

China and India are two of the largest outbound source markets in the world with Nepal as one of its immediate recipient nations. According to 2018 statistics, approximately 150 million Chinese travelled abroad, out of which only 0.1% visited Nepal while only 0.75% Indian tourists visited Nepal out of 25.85 million total Indian outbound !!

This clearly indicates that Nepal has not been able to tap the prospective tourists’ influx from these two important market nations. We believe that NICE will play an instrumental role in strengthening the tourism ties between the three countries adding significant value in support of the target set by the Govt. of Nepal with the Visit Nepal Year 2020. We believe that the envisaged expo shall pave the foundation for meeting our vision of bringing in 5 million tourists into the country, by the year 2030!!

For this NICE historic event, we are anticipating 1000+ Delegates from 3 countries including 200+ regional buyers, 100 exhibitors, 15+ High-value speakers, and hundreds of guests and delegates including government officials, media invitees and trade visitors; together to mark the national celebration of Visit Nepal Year 2020.

For the successful organization of this historic initiative, we will be collaborating with different tourism organizations and stakeholders in Nepal, India and China; and we seek the active cooperation and support from all our partners, sponsors, airlines, hotels, media and the entire travel-trade fraternity of our nation – Nepal.

We would like to cordially invite our friends from the media and tourism industry to join us for NICE in the historic city Kathmandu from 21st to 24th February, 2020. We extend our heartfelt gratitude and thanks to all of you for your continued cooperation, collaboration and support in our efforts and take this opportunity to invite all the industry stakeholders to join hands together in building Nepal’s prosperity via tourism; by helping to make NICE a grand success!