Border Tourism, Boundless Potential

The immense richness of cross-border tourism between Nepal and India is truly unparalleled. In light of the post-COVID shift towards short-haul travel, harnessing this potential has become an essential adaptation. Promoting cross-border tourism now stands as a smart and strategic step in deepening bilateral cooperation. No oversights in the contemplation are remarkably earmarked for long. The basic principle of the operation of a tourist destination as a system of connected stakeholders is the creation of new value reflected in the creation of added value for participants in the business process. To create added value, stakeholders in the changed context of Nepal's federal setup need to plan and manage their marketing function strategically. A systematic function, very rhetorically, of introducing subsets of marketing strategies into the broader strategy of developing cross-border tourist destinations has been very regular and clichéd. As found, cross-border tourist destinations do not take systematic approaches to introduce marketing strategies but rather identify themselves as a part of broader development strategies of cross-border areas, quite conventionally and with ease. In rare cases, stand-alone brands help destinations consolidate their market position and exploit the potential of two or more cross-border destinations simultaneously. Despite identifying synergistic effects and understanding the importance and benefits of integration and cooperation, cross-border tourist destinations are unfortunately not yet standardised business practices. However, the one thousand-mile stretch of land border between the two countries always poses a hovering prosperity. With legends and myths of mythology and an exceptional cultural spectrum, the dividends have been far from realised.

Cross-border tourism does not operate in a standardised manual. Destinations across the land borders with India on three fronts – east, west, and vastly south – are perceived by the Indian visitors/tourists as composite sets of attributes – services, attractions, and socio-cultural characters that are (un)marketed in a non-uniform way. The ever-growing expectations of cross-border visitors to receive all the necessary information and organised elements of the offer within the tourist destinations are geographically sporadic. Cross-border destinations, even in those areas where administrative borders are no longer there, such as in the European Union, face many challenges concerning the uncoordinated operation of two or more different tourist systems in one tourist area, which is marketed as a cross-border tourist area or destination. In general, border destinations face poorer economic efficiency and thus also lower competitive advantages than other inland destinations. Therefore, cross-border integration is an appropriate systemic development approach, including for destinations connected across borders for various other interests. To make it easier for tour companies to overcome the challenges of cross-border tourist destinations, authorities should develop marketing strategies with targeted branding or sub-branding per se.

Marketing strategies are all the more critical for regions in cross-border areas, as they face many geographical, administrative, and socio-cultural differences. These, in turn, raise specific challenges that can be managed with various tools and approaches. 

Strategic planning in marketing helps regional development planners, management and decision-making bodies, and other regional managers to facilitate marketing, management, and promotion of economic activity.

Cross-border cooperation in tourism is largely jotted down to subordinated actual implementation practices and cross-border cooperation projects, as their occurrence is mainly the result of the activation of natural resources or infrastructure or common heritage to mythology in an area that combines or links destinations into mutual partnership cooperation, quite expectedly. Cross-border tourism cooperation can be defined within at least three different scopes: at the regional level, in bilateral networks, and through collaboration at the local level. Each scope of cross-border networks has implications for tourist destinations. Different scopes of partnership cooperation require different intensities of integration depending on the level of influence of an individual institution in a specific cross-border tourist destination. This raises the question of how these organizations approach and conduct common marketing strategies and within what scope. Partnership cooperation brings a variety of experiences and knowledge to stakeholders that can be revealed in a long period of monitoring the phenomenon in the formation of a pattern or trend that indicates the direction of development in the future.

An examination into how cross-border tourist destinations plan and implement marketing strategies considering geographical scale and scope opens up an interesting proposition about the cross-border cooperation among the destinations in applying marketing strategies as a part of the management and development of cross-border tourist destinations and opportunities and obstacles in building joint marketing strategies for cross-border tourist destinations.

The basic principle of cross-border cooperation is the establishment of cross-border connections and contractual relations in border areas to find standard solutions to common problems. However, cross-border tourist destinations do not necessarily cover only border areas; they also build cooperation through cross-border partnerships in different geographical and institutional scopes. The cross-nation states have their own national tourism organizations. Still, they can perform together in the market, with local cooperation between countries that share an administrative border, but the area is intertwined with cultural and natural resources. In this case, the border areas form a cross-border tourist destination. Tourism development in cross-border destinations is encouraged by various forces, interests, and needs, such as political, socio-cultural, economic, technological, competitive, and safety. Therefore, how marketing relationships are established and their intensity can be aggravated by the fact that local tourism organizations operating in cross-border destinations carry out marketing activities with other stakeholders at different levels and dimensions and do not necessarily have a uniform and homogeneous objective.

Among other strategic prerequisites, taking the colossal transnational dynamics of Indo-Nepal relations into account, political support, organisation of local tourism organizations and tourism associations, management structure, and mutual interests are essential for successful cross-border tourism cooperation in the field of institutional collaboration, whereas cross-border destination branding, cooperation in the co-design of tourist products, access to the market and combined sales efforts by the trade fraternity are also crucial for strategic marketing.

Promotional activities, as an essential part of marketing strategies, are implemented in cross-border tourism destinations or products by building a single visibility that combines two or more destinations in one promotional message. This way of cooperation brings many advantages: the costs of promotion per country or tourist organisation are reduced due to the sharing of the expenses of mutual marketing activities, multiplied promotional effects, increasing business opportunities, the possibility of joint financing of projects by cross-border destinations, efficient exchange of information between countries, exchange of good practices and greater networking of other providers indirectly involved in the cross-border tourism infrastructure.

Connecting tour companies to clusters and networking creates better business visibility and more marketing opportunities. The principle of cooperation in cross-border regions, based on such integration, is essential for marketing and joint brand management. 

It enables the integration of different institutions into a single framework, including different stakeholders, setting common goals, and highlighting key values and initiatives to develop common strategies. Sharing and synchronizing common goals is key to shared marketing success and branding as a single cluster of interrelated stakeholders. 

At the same time, stakeholders of tourist destinations involved in the marketing activities of a cross-border destination or tourist product face the challenge of finding a balance between competitiveness and partnership. 

A principle of collaboration in the communities of tourist destinations is a prerequisite for their planning and development. Such collaboration makes it easier and also more efficient to market destinations as single locales. It is necessary to take advantage of both destinations, especially in the case of cross-border cooperation of a broader economic spectrum. Marketing opportunities and challenges related to cross-border attractions are limited due to several administrative barriers.

The marketing of a cross-border destination differs from other inland tourist destinations in several factors and restrictions conditioned by the administrative border or other economic, social, security, or institutional obstacles. Consequently, the unified management of a cross-border tourist destination is required as an optimal strategy. This marketing approach demands several mutual coordination and legal, administrative, and institutional adjustments from various stakeholders involved in the planning, development, and implementation of marketing activities.

Although there are several opportunities for cross-border cooperation, the singularity of cross-border destinations is still evident compared to inland destinations. Marketing strategies are implemented sporadically and gradually and mainly depend on additional co-financing. As marketing strategies are only successful in the medium or long term, there is a perceived lack of longer-term strategic partnerships between stakeholders in cross-border areas, which consolidate the marketing position and provide a basis for designing and implementing marketing strategies. In rare cases, stand-alone brands are created to consolidate destinations in the market and simultaneously exploit the marketing potential of two or more cross-border destinations.

Cross-border tourism resource systems are subject to double systems of control imposed by both countries in which the resource systems are located. Suppose the development of tourism resources is carried out in isolation by the different countries. 

In that case, it can be partial and disconnected, making a rational allocation of various types of resources impossible. The cooperative development of cross-border tourism ensures the integration of tourism development design; it considers the sensible allocation of resources and the economic interests of the concerned countries, addressing cross-border tourism in a multi-level way and from multiple angles.

Currently, tourism enterprises and organizations in both countries focus mainly on outbound and inbound travel, with little attention to border tourism. 

Tourists stay only briefly in border areas. Infrastructure in border areas should be developed to meet tourists' consumption needs, ensuring that all services – transportation, accommodation, and catering – are readily available both in border areas and along travel routes. Cross-border tourism between these two great nations is simply not just the statistics. It is a vital lifeline.

(Thapaliya works as senior manager at Nepal Tourism Board.)