On the eve of national tourism campaign “Nepal Tourism Year” (NTY-2011), Nepal has unveiled two Chinese books on Sunday targeting Nepali tour guides and Nepalis who have little Chinese language background. Since Nepali government has projected northern neighbor China as its second largest market after southern neighbor India, government as well as tourism entrepreneurs are paying high attention toward Chinese tourists at present. Nepal is observing the year 2011 as the year of tourism with the aim of alluring more than one million international tourists among which more than 100,000 Chinese tourists are expected to visit the country.
“Nepali government has given high priority to Chinese tourists visiting Nepal as per its policy. Our target is to increase Chinese tourists each year,” said Kishor Thapa, Secretary at the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation. According to him, those Chinese visitors coming to Nepal are dominantly tourists and businessmen.”The number of Chinese visiting to Nepal is soaring up every year and language has been the major barrier. I hope recently released books will help to wipe out that language barrier and soothe easy communication between Nepalis and Chinese people,” Thapa added.
In the year 2009, more than 35,000 Chinese visitors arrived Nepal and government has analyzed that this number can be doubled during 2011 if heedful attention paid for promotional activities in China this year. In contrast to the soaring number of Chinese visitor arrivals in Nepal, the number of Chinese speaking Nepali tour guides are limited. There are only 40 licensed Chinese speaking tour guides in Nepal.
