NATTA President Mr. Madhu Sudan Acharya and First VP Mr. CN. Pandey called on the office of Director General, Department of Tourism on Tuesday, the 29th March and apprised him of the current problems being faced by the tour operators and travel agents. President Acharya in his discourse with the tourism honcho at the department explained how a few of the agents were forced to stop their business as the Department of Tourism (DOT) invalidated their licenses to operate business simply because they couldn’t renew their licenses within the stipulated time owing to various reasons. One of the major reasons has been found to be the non-submission of periodical statement to DOT.
NATTA urged that the agents shouldn’t be deprived of operating their business instead such agents should be allowed to run their business by renewing their licenses by charging certain amount as late fine. Moreover, President Acharya also said that the timing of submitting the periodic statement on the part of agents should be extended to one year and not limit that to six months. NATTA officials also suggested introducing digitization creating a network with all the agents who are granted the license to operate business so that the periodic statements can be easily tracked by DOT. They said that it was also the responsibility of the concerned government authority to protect the goodwill of the agents who are the tax-payers.
Secondly, NATTA delegates also urged the DG of DOT to probe into why Nepalese tourists were not allowed to travel in the tourist vehicles with green plates. They said the inconsistency in the Tourism Act and Transport Management Act should be immediately amended since the nation is committed to promote domestic tourism as well.
The Transport Management Department of the Bagmati Zone doesn’t issue green plates to tourism vehicles (cars and jeeps). NATTA demanded that such provisions should be immediately withdrawn as the existing green plated tourism vehicles do not suffice the demand of the increasing number of tourists especially in the peak seasons.
It is indeed a good thing that the government is going to form a committee for the purpose of rating the Star Hotels. NATTA being the apex body of tour operators and travel agents has to be included in the upcoming aforesaid committee.
The next point raised by NATTA high-level officials was that no travel agent should be deprived of getting licenses from DOT once they start their operation. No extra fines should be levied if they apply for the license within the same fiscal year of their registration in the concerned department.
Finally, GON should allocate enough of fund to organize NATTA initiated the Fourth Himalayan International Travel Mart in Kathmandu in the near future.