Note: This brief focuses only on problems and prospective solutions. There are many positive facets to tourism in Nepal -- the world-class assets, the important working being done by the Kathmandu Municipality, the Nepal Tourism Board/Organization, the Thamel and Durbar Square Tourism Promotion Committees, the Kathmandu Environmental Education Project (KEEP), Mahendra Conservation Trust, HMG Dept of Wildlife and National Parks, Dept of Civil Aviation and Tourism, ICIMOD, WWF, and numerous other agencies and entities -- all of which have agendas that overlap with much of what follows.

• Goals
  • Need to ensure positive word-of-mouth and also return visits
  • Compete effectively with new "exotic" destinations (Vietnam, Laos, China)

• Strategy
  • Eliminate negative factors
  • Promote quantity (not just quality) tourism
  • Facilitate tourist activities: shopping, education, volunteer work, day-tripping
  • Inform visitors (more complete heritage interpretation, signs, notice of upcoming events)

• Impediments and Irritations
  • Political instability
  • Garbage, pollution, chaotic traffic, noise (blaring music shops, honking)
  • Visa: restricted duration, cost, repeated visits to Tourism Center
  • Hassles: hard-sell from street vendors, pushers, taxi and rickshaw drivers
  • Racist pricing and entrance fees
  • Continual hustle: visas, visa extensions, airport tax, VAT, admission fees for tourist zones, museum charges, trekking permits, trekking peak permits, currency exchange commissions, bakshish, tiger balm
  • Lack of fixed pricing
  • Difficulty of getting change
  • Imprecise addressing system (needed: a one-street-one-name system)
  • Substandard mass transportation (overcrowding, cramped seating, blaring stereos, unsafe driving, bumpy roads)
  • Lack of hot water
  • Poor hygiene
  • Undependable postal system and shipping services
  • Inconvenient business hours (difficult to find food and transportation for early and late buses and flights; restricted entertainment and internet options late at night)

• Importance of Backpacker Tourism
  • Not so sensitive as commercial tours to real or perceived crises
  • trickle-drip impact on the poorest communities
  • Flexible itinerary: can be tempted to stay longer, and to make unplanned sidetrips and treks
  • Greater potential for return visits

• Opportunities
  • Local volunteer offices should have lists of current opportunities to take advantage of a wide range of offers: short-term menial labor (painting, collecting garbage, removing posters), longer-term skilled labor (language and IT training, heritage interpretation, translation), bridge work to be continued after repatriation (tourism promotion, fundraising, translation)
  • Donor tourism: facilitate sponsorships (e.g. KEEP's suggestion of a college fund for children of porters)
  • Education for tourists

  Masses of overhead wires make it difficult to produce postcard quality photographs of Freak Street.

• What to do
  • Unite the tourist areas: rickshaw/pedestrian alley between Thamel and Durbar Square
  • Shuttles from Durbar Square to Durbar Marg
  • Note to Yak and Yeti: Budget travelers like to splurge! Try introducing them to "quality tourism" by offering a coupon to the Sunrise buffet, and free late night transport home from the Casino
  • Clean up and gentrify the riverfront
  • Organize rickshaws: A Rickshaw Operator's Association should license drivers, limit numbers to reduce competition, fix prices, designate queues, subsidize aesthetic enhancements, organize rickshaw beauty contests and races (how about a Kathmandu Rickshaw Grand Prix with two categories, regular and reversed -- where the tourist drives the wallah?)
  • Expand educational opportunities for tourists
    • Promote Nepali (and other language) schools, religious training, mountaineering, indigenous cooking
    • Establish world-class institute of development and tourism; set up research library in Kathmandu; facilitate transfer of credit for independent study and volunteer work
  • Promote publication of postcards and posters specifically illustrating tourist life (Freak Street, Thamel, etc.)
  • Eliminate tangles of overhead power and telephone lines that impede photography, thereby undermining the cheapest form of tourism promotion.

• Durbar Square
  • Premise: a key “highland-lowland linkage” is the interdependence of budget tourism and mountain ecotourism – the two must be devoped synergistically
  • Immediate priorities: publicize and build enthusiasm for the work being done by the Hanuman Dhoka Construction Project, and co-ordinate agendas of Durbar Square Tourism Promotion Committee and Women for Change
  • Get rid of the admission fee -- or at least draw attention to the fact that tickets are good for a full week and that passes for up to one year are readily available at the same price as single admissions; if there must be a fee, it should also cover admission to the museum
  • Restore the glamour of the monument zone
  • Museum/Visitors’ center: focus on Newari culture AND on history of tourism, highlighting the role of pioneers such as Toni Hagen, Boris Lissanevitch, and the “freaks” in putting Nepal on the map. Show that tourists, academics, developers, and investors are key to the past, present and future of Nepal
  • Make monument zone user-friendly: toilets, garbage cans, restaurants, accredited guides, post office, information should be readily available; restrict hustlers, traffic, noise
  • Promote regularly scheduled cultural events (dance, music, etc.)

• "Back to Kathmandu"
  • Reunion of the “hippies” (now prosperous and more conventional)
  • Western Rock/Nepali Music Festival: reciprocal inspiration
  • Homage to George Harrison, father of rock philanthropy
  • Bob Seeger’s rock hit: “If I ever get out of here, I know just what I’m gonna do: I’m going back to K-K-K-Kathmandu!”
  • Celebration of the re-opening of the Overland Route (if stability has come to Afghanistan and Iran ... and Kashmir?)
  • Focus: Revival of Durbar Square as the cultural heart of Kathmandu