On December 7, 2006, I began putting together a ‘one-pager’ titled “Thoughts on a Travel Mart for the Himalayan Region”. The under lying reason for that was that there was only one Mart that had been somewhat successful for Nepal and that was the PATA Adventure Travel Mart later renamed the PATA Adventure Travel Conference and Mart.
Birthed in Nepal in 1988, before I had even joined the travel industry, the first two iterations of that Mart in ’88 and ’89 were held in Kathmandu. That Mart was owned by PATA and staying true to the PATA Spirit, the event had to be shared with other members. The Mart travelled to India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Bhutan, Thailand, Cambodia and other exotic locales coming back to Nepal in 1996 2000, 2010 and 2011. It was then merged with the main PATA Mart. Occasionally, there have been attempts tries by PATA at reviving the Mart with the latest effort being made to hold it along with the PATA Annual Summit in Pokhara in late May 2023.
In 2006, when I wrote that ‘one-pager’, Tourism had already overtaken oil and defense as an industry worldwide and Adventure Tourism was its fastest growing segment. As a geographic area the Himalaya region had a lot to offer potential travelers. There was no dearth of cultural offerings in Pakistan, northern India, Nepal, Tibet of the PRC, BhutanBhutan, and Myanmar. But there was a huge product range in which the region held a distinct Comparative Advantage and that was adventure. In the case of Nepal, we held both comparative and competitive advantages in the adventure segment.
We were, after all, the country that gave the world commercial trekking and Himalayan expedition style mountaineering. We had big hills, bigger mountainsmountains, and some of the best rivers for whitewater rafting and kayaking. Mountain biking, and aerial adventure sports would come later. The National Park at Chitwan was a runaway success story. Kathmandu with its mythical allure beckoned to travelers with its cultural offerings. So, what was the problem? It was just that there were very little opportunities to showcasehighlight our products effectively to a captive audience. When we’d try to get attention at other big Marts like the main PATA Mart, World Tourism Market, the ITB in Berlin we’d be up against highly established destinations, who were already masters at calling attention to their highly popular products.
The way to do it would be to have our very own Mart or Marketplace where we’d be able to invite buyers interested in our specific product offerings. Instead of travelling the world looking for buyers we would bring the buyers to Nepal, get them to meet with the hotels, tourtour, and adventure travel operators here, show them the country and our magnificent offerings and they would be knocked off their feet! But how?
The hotels were willing to put up the venue and rooms to host the buyers, the tour operators were ready to put in the transport arrangements, all other private sector stakeholders were ready to show the buyers our country but The Nepal Tourism Board was all of one year old; its budgets were a joke, even for the early 2000s, the Government of Nepal was not in a position to help (the Maoist insurgency was about to get very ugly) and frankly they were not convinced at all and worst of all, the national carrier of Nepal, Royal Nepal Airlines was in earnest decline, limiting our wherewithal to get the required buyers into Kathmandu.
Then, when then PATA Nepal Chapter Chairman Prabin Pandey brought this up with a Tourism Consultant of the SNV (The Netherlands Development Organization), he suggested that PATA Nepal Chapter apply for a European Union Grant to organize and host a Himalayan Travel Mart in Kathmandu. Once the first one was done successfully, we’d figure out a way to hold the second one by begging, if necessary! And so, the PATA Nepal Chapter officers got very busy in putting together a voluminous proposal which was packed into a box that was meant for five reams of standard A4 photocopy papers and shipped it off to Belgium. The proposal was declined. But the need to have a Himalayan Travel Mart stuck.
Tourism was already one of the fastest growing industries in the world, even when the Chinese and Indian had not started traveling in earnest. The adventure travel segment of tourism in which Nepal held several advantages and the Himalayan region held some distinct comparative advantages was the fastest growing segment in tourism. The Himalayan region housed some of the most development deprived regions of the world but the very mountains that hinder the region’s development were also throwing up immense possibilities via tourism. According to the World Bank Group South Asia, of which the Himalayan region forms a major part received upward of 27 million tourists in 2019, up from a little over 7 million in 2006 when the original Mart was first envisaged. There were 1.5 billion tourists in 2019, up from 846 million in 2006 (source: Statista). South Asia’s share of tourist arrivals in 2006 was 0.82% of worldwide arrivals. Its share in 2019 was 1.8% of arrivals. While the growth in absolute numbers looklooks good and 20 million additionaladded arrivals have done a world of good for our economies the overall share of international arrivals at 1.8% leaves much to be desired and exposes our lack of access to the market.
While the marketing spend by all south Asian countries on tourism has grown it has not kept pace with the spending by other countries and regions. In 2019, according to the World Bank Group, south Asia took in USD 41.88 billion in tourism earnings. Applying a rule of thumb where your marketing spend should be 10% of your revenue then the total marketing budget of the south Asian tourism economies should be USD 4.1 billion. However, less than USD 100 million went into marketing the region in 2019. Obviously, there are other sectors equally in dire need of funds and governments make the best allocations that they are able. Which brings us to the point of how every limited marketing dollar may be squeezed to get the most out of it?
There is more than one way to skin a cat. Similarly, there are many ways to squeeze a tourism marketing dollar. One of those and probably the most efficient ways is to get stakeholders involved, findfind, and qualify potential buyers, bring the buyer to the market, hard sell them on your product and let them go out and sell the product they have experienced. The stakeholders like NTOs, airlines, accommodation, tour operators, attractions, etc. all share the cost burden (For example the Nepal Tourism Board’s budget for the Himalayan Travel Mart 2023 is roughly USD 150,000) with the rest of the costs being shared by airlines who are flyingg in the buyers, hotels that providing those buyers with free rooms, tour operators providing them with transport, hotels and restaurants comping their meals, tour operators giving them free tours of various local attractions, and so forth. In the end you have a group of people, who hitherto did not know your product but now have experienced it firsthand and are ready and equipped to sell it to the customer.
A word of caution here. This does not mean that the more Marts you organize the better off you will be! A single Mart owned by the NTO, implemented by a partner organization like PATA Nepal Chapter who can source and qualify buyers and get the entire industry on board should suffice. Initially, the Mart can be domiciled in Nepal for the first five years while it grows and then it can be moved around to other countries in the region with the respective NTOs and local stakeholders sharing the cost burden. The seller organizations from Pakistan, India, Tibet of China, Nepal, BhutanBhutan, and Myanmar will, of course, pay to participatetake part wherever the Mart may be held in the region. Even in a single country the Mart can be held in different locations in different years. In the case of NepalNepal, it can be variously held in Kathmandu, Pokhara, Chitwan, Lumbini or other places as may be decided by the NTO and the local host stakeholders bringing the benefits of such an endeavor to the local communities.
The author is a former Chairman of the PATA Nepal Chapter, a former Industry Council Proxy to the PATA Board, a former Executive member of the Trekking Agents Association of Nepal, a former Member of the Executive Committee of the Nepal Tourism Board and a former Member of the Board of Directors of Nepal Airlines Corporation. At the time of this article the author is serving his third and final term as the President of the Nepal Association of Tour Operators. He can be reached on Twitter at @BigBlackYak His blogs can be read at www.bigblackyak.blogspot.com