Bishnu Prasad Parajuli a case study of English daily newspapers of Nepal

Abstract

For the systematic and coordinated efforts to optimize the satisfaction of tourists for sustained growth of tourism there is a great role of mass media, which are the instruments of communication. So, there is always impact of mass media in the tourism marketing. In this regard, the study is basically related to the role of three English daily newspapers of Nepal in tourism marketing. The general objective of the research study is to show and analyze the roles of mass media in tourism marketing. The study is limited in terms of time, data collections and analysis methods and period etc. Similarly, the dissertation is organized into seven chapters. Various literatures are also reviewed to analyze the problems and to suggest the recommendations. Both primary and secondary sources of in formations are used on the basis of descriptive and analytical research design. Judgmental and purposive sampling methods are used for case study and key informants respectively. The quantitative data are presented in the tabular form and analyzed by simple percentage analysis while qualitative data are analyzed on the basis of the descriptive and analytical research design. The study also tries to give a descriptive view of the selected newspapers and their publications about the study topic. On the basis of the research analysis, it is found that only 7.0 percent of the newspapers are dailies and 47.3 percent of total days have zero publication about tourism. Similarly, 53.7 percent of the publications are news and tourism publication constitutes 1.48 percent of the total publication for TRN. The most of the tourism publications are published in business and op. ed page, 42.0 percent of them are in large font and 63.9 percent of them are neither published in boxes nor in colors. The most of the publications are published not as a major one. Around 27.7 percent are promoting and informative publications. Newspapers are regarded as influential, reliable and widely used mass media. Absence of experts, low budget, small market, political instability, foreign poor relations and poor infrastructure development are the major drawbacks regarding study topic. It is also seen that all newspapers are internally correlated. On the basis of the findings, it has been concluded that there is the good positive role of newspapers than the negative ones but not as much as to be in tourism marketing in Nepal. On the basis of the research work, it is recommended that a separate page should be devoted for tourism, the newspapers should play the positive roles, negative and harassing news should be minimized, it should act as an essential element and means of exercising power, the qualitative and quantitative publications and number of newspapers should be increased, pressures should be minimized and inspirations and influencing factors should be maximized, more advertisements should be introduced, the reach and source of newspapers should be maximized, positive roles should be maximized while negative roles should be minimized, there should be the strong commitment among the different organs of the society and at last but not lest, comparative as well as similar studies should be carried out to a greater extent.