The China International Tourism Forum which was co-organized by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) was held on 13 November on the occasion of China International Travel Mart (CITM) 2015 in Kunming, China.  The main objective of this event was to rally international support for the acceleration of the recovery process of Nepal’s tourism industry in the wake of the destruction caused by the recent earthquake.

The key highlights of the event were a series of actions which China intends to take as a continuation of its post-earthquake support of the recovery process of Nepal. These include the visit of about 100 Chinese tour operators to Nepal by the end of 2016 in order to have firsthand experience of its local tourism products. In addition to this, China will provide facilities to restructure and reinvigorate the Nepalese tourism industry, and offer training programmes to some 100 Nepalese tourism personnel in the next two years. Also, CNTA will provide Nepal with 2 free exhibition booths in CITM in the next three years to facilitate the tourism promotion of Nepal in China.

These measures  will not only help the revival of Nepalese tourism but will also go a long way in building a bridge of goodwill between the two countries to foster political, social, cultural and economic relations in the future.

With over two hundred tour operators, media and international participants present, the forum became an ideal platform to transmit the most updated messages about Nepal’s tourism infrastructure rebuilding efforts and to draw the world’s attention to the country’s dire need for continued support. These messages emerged from UNWTO’s fact-finding mission which was carried out prior to the Forum in order to assess the extent of the damage caused by the earthquake and to formulate a comprehensive and up-to-date situational analysis of the impact of the earthquake on the tourism industry of Nepal.