Kathmandu (Rastriya Samachar Samiti): The tourist hotels in Pokhara have invited domestic tourists with a decision to give 50 percent discount to speed up the tourism which has been slowing down since last April due to covid-19 pandemic.
Restaurant and Bar Association (Reban) Pokhara is organizing a road festival on the occasion of the English New year. “Millions of rupees have been invested in hotels during the tourist season. We have now arranged 50 percent discount targeting domestic tourists,” said Reban president Bikal Tulachan.
Chairman Tulachan also informed that the hotel was opened after fulfilling the health safety measures. He informed that the Hotel Association has reached Birgunj, Biratnagar and Janakpur of Eastern Nepal through the ‘Jaun Hai Pokhara’ program for the promotion of domestic tourism and interacted with the tourism businessmen, stakeholders and media persons there.
“The only option now is to promote domestic tourism. They are also ready to move forward with cooperation and coordination,” he said. He is confident that the activities of domestic tourists will increase if Simara, Janakpur and Biratnagar are connected by air for domestic tourism.
According to Tulachan, there are 700 tourist hotels in Pokhara and 400 are affiliated to the association. The hotel has rooms ranging from Rs 1,500 to Rs 20,000 per night. The hotel sector has an investment of Rs 125 billion, while 15,000 people are directly and 3,000 people are indirectrly employed.
He said that some old entrepreneurs have been displaced from the tourism business due to covid-19 and new entrepreneurs have started arriving in the area again. Other tourism business organizations have also visited inter-districts to make tourism active.
The Nepal Association of Tour and Travel Agents (NATTA) Tanahu, Gorkha and Nepal Tourist Transport Entrepreneurs (NTVA) have recently returned from Palpa, Nawalparasi, Tanahun interacting with various religious and tourism entrepreneurs and stakeholders.
Chairman of the Pokhara Tourism Council, Gopi Bahadur Bhattarai, said that the state should provide relief to the entrepreneurs by providing more facilities to them.
“Entrepreneurs have come up with various concessional packages to speed up the slowdown in tourism. The state should provide more facilitation now,” Bhattarai said. Entrepreneurs would be comfortable.
He said that the state should immediately take initiative to keep the entrepreneurs alive by implementing the Rs 50 billion allocated in the business operation fund.