Nepal and Tibet working together to promote tourism industry

Officials on Friday said that Nepal and Tibet are going to work together to promote tourism industry in the Himalayan region.
Deputy Chief of Tibet’s tourism administration Mr. Wang Songping said, “To start with, we are jointly going to launch day tours along the China-Nepal border”.
Mr. Wang along with his Nepalese counterparts is investigating a cross Himalayan route passing through Kathmandu, in Nepal, and Tibet’s Jilung and Zham.
He said, “Services of Travel in Nepal and China are promoted to work closely to draw more visitors to the Himalayan region and promote package tours in the two countries”.
Visa procedures have been made easy for Chinese Tourists by Nepal Government. Chinese Tourists who catches the direct bus service to Nepal could get visa at land ports in Tibet.
China’s 3 leading airline companies known as China Eastern, China Southern and Air China operate passenger flights to Nepal.
Nepal has become a tourist destination for Chinese tourists from 2001. Since then, arrival of Chinese Tourists to Nepal has been growing by 20 percent each year.
Consul General of Nepal in Tibet Mr. Naindra Upadhaya said, “Previous year, 15,000 Chinese tourists visited Nepal and also a large number of International Tourists visited Tibet by way of Nepal”.
Mr. Upadhaya mentioned that Nepal is launching “Nepal Tourism Year” in 2011which is a national tourism campaign and hope to draw a million international tourists. Among them Nepal expects 100,000 of tourists to be Chinese.
A joint coordination committee was established by the Tourism authorities of Nepal and Tibet since they had signed a note of understanding on tourism promotion in 2003.
Till date, the coordination committee has organized 3 meetings. The fourth is going to be held in Lhasa on this September.