Prospects and Problems of Cultural Tourism: A Study of Kathmandu Durbar Square Kathmandu, Nepal

Abstract

Tourism is one of the prominent sectors which consists of huge potentiality to contribute in the development of our country Nepal. Cultural tourism is one of the forms of tourism that is concerned with a country’s or region’s culture specifically people’s lifestyle and components such as art, history, religion, ad elements that has shaped people’s lives. The major objective of the research is to find major prospects and problems of cultural tourism and assess people’s perception and views regarding the development of cultural tourism. In this research, the information has been obtained from 4 categories of respondents - KII, local people, service providers and tourists. Simple random sampling was used while selecting local people and service providers whereas accidental sampling was used while selecting the tourists who were found in the Kathmandu Durbar Square area. Altogether 6 key informants, 40 local people, 20 service providers, 20 tourists and were requested to fill up the questionnaire, semi or unstructured interviews, observation as well as KII methods were applied. The findings show that 65% of the respondents consider Historic buildings, monuments and temples as the major prospect in regard to tangible heritages and 60% of the total respondents consider social practices, rituals, and festive events (e.g. festivals, jatras, processions, games, mourning ceremonies, weddings etc.) as the major prospect of cultural tourism in regard of intangible cultural heritages. The findings show that the major problem that has been hindering the cultural tourism is the unmanaged infrastructures and heritage sites, pollution and lack of adequate information and location maps and names for navigation. With the individual survey, the researcher was able to find that development of cultural tourism depends majorly on the state of cultural heritages (both tangible and intangible). Generation gap and notion of wealthy living has been a major challenge in case of development of cultural tourism. There are many possibilities and hindrances in the area of cultural tourism of the Kathmandu Durbar Square. It is very important that with the growing age of urbanization and modernization, sticking to the roots and being accountable towards our native culture and traditions, it is now high time we pay due respect to our culture and heritages that has led us to be distinguished from the people of other parts of the world. v