NAC, NATTA joining hands for NTY 2011

National flag carrier to go the extra mile to regain lost turf

Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) and Nepal Association of Travel and Tour Agent (NATTA) are moving on with different plans for the success of Nepal Tourism Year 2011. NAC, the national flag carrier, is working for its brand image publicity while NATTA is moving ahead with its plans for Heritage Trail Development.
As international airlines have taken over the market with 90 per cent share, NAC is struggling to develop its marketing plans so as to recover its market. NAC has only 7-8 per cent of the total market share. Now, it has plans to increase its market share to 30 per cent over the next few years.

Talking about the need for developing new marketing strategies, NAC executive chairman Sugat Ratna Kansakar said, “The corporation at the earliest requires new marketing strategies and promotional programmes to publicise itself at both the national and international levels.“

For this, NAC is preparing economy tour packages in collaboration with some of the travel and tour operators here that will be for both outbound and inbound tourists, he said. To warm up its market, NAC is ready to hype its brand image publicity.
Kansakar said that besides the foreign tourist traffic the trend of traveling abroad during vacations is increasing among the middle class and upper middle class Nepalis.

Thus, NAC is developing strategies to offer economy and optimum tour packages to all kinds of tourist.

“It will take about two months, we are in the initial stage,“ he said.

Meanwhile, NATTA is moving on with Heritage Trail Development.

Informing about the developments of trails, NATTA president Arjun Prasad Sharma they are working on development of some trails which have remained unused for long.

“With the identification of new trekking routes, some of the old routes have fallen into disuse and we are trying to revive these trails,“ Sharma said.

Within this week, NATTA will be informing people about the different heritage trails that will be developed for the coming event of NTY 2011.

The NTY secretariat has asked all the people to fly the national flag and display the logo of NTY 2011 in preparation for the mega event.