Hello and welcome to the High Yield Tourism Podcast. I’m Gary Bowerman. On today’s show, Jens Thraenhart takes the helm for an illuminating discussion with Raj Giyawali, founder of SocialTours in Nepal. Jens and Raj explore concepts of lifetime experiences, narrative storytelling, and spiritual adventure in this magnificent mountain kingdom. So, let’s get started. This is High Yield Tourism.

So I’m here with Raj Giyawali from Nepal. Raj runs a company called SocialTours and is involved in various other initiatives. Good morning, Raj. How are you doing?

Doing very well. Thanks, Jens. Nice to talk to you again.

Great. Great. Nice to see you too. So, tell us a little bit about Raj, what you do and about your business and maybe a little bit about your background as well.

Yeah, well, my background is in business, but always been interested in sustainability. So even when I did previously trade and manufacturing, I was always working on sustainability. But eventually, when I went into tourism, started off with a very deep sense of value-based decision-making systems and build a business around the concept of sustainability. And that’s the one that you know, social tours. Though now I also, in the last 20 years, also run another business in Norway called Ethical Travel Portal, which is also based on similar principles. And I also get involved in a little bit of consultancies here and there and stuff like Norway called Ethical Travel which is also that. based on similar principles. Portal, And I also get involved in a little bit of consultancies here and there and stuff like that. But essentially, the passion is behind, you know, behind all of that is on looking at sustainability in travel.

Fantastic. And, you know, when I was recently in Nepal, you were so kind to show me around Kathmandu. And I would say your Kathmandu because it was really an exciting glimpse into, you know, the back alleys of Kathmandu. And I learned so much from you about your stories and the people that live there. So as we’re focusing today on high-yield tourism, which we define here as driving increased revenues for destinations, but they actually benefit and the stakeholders benefit, how do you think connecting to local communities can drive higher yields for destinations?

Oh, that’s actually quite easy because when you actually take it into local communities, you are differentiating your product quite well. And for anything to do with high-yield, you need to move away from a commodification model to a more unique model. And if you make your experiences more and more unique, you can actually get more yield. And that yield can then be transferred into communities. It can then be in the spread of experiences. Yield can then be transferred into communities. then be spread. I mean, the experience that you did was exactly the same. I mean, it is not a standard experience. It is a slightly different experience. So actually, you can actually yield more because you provide a very differentiated product. And I think that’s in the simplest form. When you try to move away from commodities to experiences to transformation to you know regeneration is where you actually start getting the higher yield and so yeah I mean whether we sometimes people like to compare it with mass tourism or luxury or you know other things but it’s not really about that it is actually about how well you differentiate it so that you can actually get more yield.

Our time together in Kathmandu was really eye-opening. Just, I mean, meeting some of the people in the neighborhood that you introduced me to or the whole history and culture behind it. I remember when we just sat down and had some chai. It was really, really a nice experience. But it then also motivates people just to kind of connect more with the local community and then, you know, kind of spend more money as well. And I think that’s what it’s all about. And you feel enriched and transformed when you leave a place. And then these stories in your head, they kind of inspire you to also inspire other people.

You’re very right there. Yeah, and I think the principle behind it is quite simple. People thankfully want, now there’s more and more, for people to have experiences like this. People are not happy to just take photographs and move around. You know, they really want to experience. And when you provide that experience, people are willing to pay more money. They’re willing to act. They happily pay more money for it. Right. I mean, gone are the days when people are just going to stay in a very expensive hotel and spend money. Rather, they would actually stay anywhere, but do a great experience and spend money there. Right. stay anywhere, but do a great experience and spend money there, right? So eventually what happens is that if you stay in a very expensive hotel, yes, your money is being spread, yes, but most of it is going towards costs. You know, the cost of your room, the cost of your bed, the cost of the water, the cost of everything, right? So it’s not really yield, it’s just a cost. But the yield comes, profit comes when you actually deliver a great experience, which has not too much cost. And that money can then be spread around really well. So that way, experiences make for a bigger chunk of yield is what I really think. And that can only happen when you start, you know, really differentiating your product.

Great. And I love how you actually just explained the whole concept of yield. And I think we need to also recognize the expenses or the cost that goes into delivering these experiences as well. Sometimes these hidden costs, if it is just, you know, waste removal or plumbing or all the sanitation roads, all of that kind of stuff needs to be paid for. And if that money is going out of the destination, as we call it, the leakage factor, then still the destination and its residents needs to pay for it.

Yeah, that’s so true. And here also another element comes in, which I really like to apply, and I know you know about it a little bit, is getting the traveler involved and being financially transparent. If you start doing that and the traveler is more involved in that process and understands what tourism really means and where the impacts are, then people are much more willing to put money into it. Most of the time, we like to just deliver a tourism experience with just a price without really explaining where the money goes. And it’s not cheating. It’s quite honest. But when you get people more involved in it, they understand it better. They’re more willing to actually pay more. And then your yield gets better, which is exactly what you want.

No, I love this concept of transparency, which drives trust and trust obviously builds relationships. And when you have these relationships, then you’re willing to, you know, to become part of the whole ecosystem and actually become a stakeholder in itself. And I think that’s then really when this becomes very strong and you’re not just a visitor that comes in and leaves and there’s really no connection.

and there’s really no connection. And I think the word that you agree. I think we’re probably mentioned, going to repeat that is called ecosystem. And trying to get the traveler a seat in that ecosystem is very important. Though they are a very important part of the ecosystem, a lot of times in the industry, we don’t look at them as that. We just look at them as being the people who are paying money. And we don’t bother to get them to understand. We don’t bother to get them. We just look at them as a consumer and look at their preference and just deliver it to them. But actually, they are a very big part of the ecosystem of travel, you know, and to involve them in the process will really result in a better experience, better product, better yield, better everything.

Yeah. And now with technology, you can do so much with it. Someone comes into a situation, you can then, you know, kind of bring them in, capture that data, build a better relationship. And I’m not saying technology is the be-all, be-end to the whole thing, but it’s an enabler to make that happen and really, you know, is a catalyst to drive these relationships.

I cannot agree more right there. This is exactly the angle that we’re working on here.

Let’s come back to Nepal. You know, I love Nepal. And in my opinion, it’s one of these most underrated destinations in the world, you know, with so much potential. And now, I mean, with Deepak, there’s a very capable tourism board CEO recently that has been appointed. He’s a mutual friend of ours and we both know him well. But if he were to come to you and he would ask like, hey, you know, Raj, give me your advice to really unleash the potential of tourism in Nepal. What would you tell them?

There’s a lot I could tell them, but, you know, quite opinionated on this matter. And actually, we’ve already had a discussion recently when I did, I conducted a networking event, you know, last week. But my advice would be actually to focus a lot, actually, because tourism requires a lot of focus. And in Nepal, the focus has to be on our brand image. And the brand image that we have in Nepal is about lifetime experiences. And lifetime experiences are a very powerful tool for actually taking a country forward like Nepal. And every little experience in Nepal can be a lifetime experience. And I know he’s concentrating on that. So that is a really good thing that he is doing. And that focus is very important. And once we get that focus in, the next thing that needs to be done is to actually bind the industry together to understand that focus. So that almost on a daily basis, you are delivering lifetime experiences to travelers. And if you can actually do that on almost every trip, the goal would be almost every trip that you deliver an essence of a lifetime experience, you would actually create brand ambassadors all around the world, you know, without actually a lot of money to be spent, you know, I mean, and that would actually really boost Nepal’s tourism potential to another level. And like you said, you know, the underrated would move to, you know, another side, no? The problem, of course, is that being a country that has got 60, 70 years of tourism history, we have limited, you know, our potential to just a few products that are moving quite smoothly, also because we have the highest place on earth. And we’ve got all these mountain ranges of the Himalayas. But what has happened is that because we have limited the number of products, the experiences that we are providing, it is getting commodified. And as you commodify, your yield goes down all the time. And as you your yield goes down all the time. And now to improve it you have to inject yield, the element of lifetime experience on every experience. And when you do that, yield will automatically go up. And this has been a classic problem in Nepal because our current per night spend is only $45. And that is incredibly low for a country that provides experiences like Nepal does. And this can be immediately boosted the moment we start focusing on the lifetime experience brand image.

This whole concept of lifetime experiences obviously resonates with people because when you do travel and take your time out of your life, out of your, you know, work life, spend money that you had to earn. You know, you want to have something that really, you know, in many cases transforms you, you know, that could be laying at the beach, but it could also be connecting with local communities. Everybody is different. But when people think about Nepal, you know, many just think about Mount Everest. And, you know, in your opinion, I mean, I have my own opinion, obviously, I’ve been to Pokhara, and it’s amazing, you know, but I also went to Lumpini and had a completely different experience than, you know, birthplace of Lord Buddha and then obviously there is Kathmandu, a fantastic city, you know, so bustling and then, you know, kind of if you know where to go, you know, like where you showed me, you know, you have a different appreciation of the city and the country in itself. But, you know, in your opinion, is Nepal really just about mountains or is there more? And if yes, how do you suggest to change these perceptions in people’s minds?

No, Nepal is more than mountains. I mean, it’s actually a hashtag that we’re running right now, Nepal more than mountains. And the reason is, yes, mountains do define the Himalaya. There’s no doubt about it. Even the southern side that we have, the flatlands are actually, you know, the water comes from the mountains. So, you know, it is connected to the mountains, you know, they would not survive without the mountains being there because the water supply is actually from the snow in the mountains. So the mountains do define us, there’s no doubt about it. But Nepal’s uniqueness and lifetime experience that we can provide is not because of only the mountains. The mountains are only providing the scale and the canvas that we have. But the people who live in the mountains, you know, the 150 different ethnic groups that we have that are living in this country, you know, 30 million of them, they are the ones who actually create the lifetime experiences because that blend of scale versus people, you know, in most countries you have scale, but you don’t have the people or you have but you don’t have the But Nepal has both scale and people, In most you scale. have but you don’t have the people. Or you have countries, people, scale, people. but you don’t have the scale. But Nepal has both scale and people. And I think that is where it really makes it different. And to develop experiences that actually combine the two is where it really makes for these lifetime experiences that can have really high yields.

Now, we also have another issue, and that is seasonality. As you know, and I’ve worked in various destinations that had to grapple with seasonality. Yeah, I just wrote an article on my balanced tourism blog about how can we harness low season travel for balanced and high yield tourism to increase destination revenues. So in your opinion, are there any specific seasonal factors that could be used to drive high-yield tourism?

Oh, yeah. I mean, in Nepal, actually, what we have, you know, we had a problem in Nepal, I must say, because we’re so focused on European and North American travel, which is very based on a blue sky, you know, blue sky travel. You know, they don’t like rain. They don’t like anything else that, you know, any weather patterns because they live in countries that don’t have great weather, unfortunately. And, you know, Nepal is a country with 300 days of sunlight. So, you know, we have good weather almost constantly. And but that season, that created a seasonality. It’s artificially caused seasonality, actually, in many ways. So to combat that, it is a matter of just having the right market focuses. For example, you are living in a place where it doesn’t see rain. And it would be easy to bring people to greener areas like Nepal during the rainy season. It is not an issue at all. It’s just about targeting the right population, right markets. And if you did that, and you combine that with the vibrancy that we have in the culture that we have here, you know, then you can actually add a lot of value into the experience. And you’re not just bringing people to see rain, you’re actually bringing them to see a rice planting festival, for example. Or, you know, you’re focusing on the festivals that this country has. You know, and if you do that, then you’ve actually, you can easily combat the low seasons and turn them into shoulder seasons. You don’t necessarily have to have it completely empty, you know. You just move that into the shoulder. And if you do the shoulder and it moves like a wave, it works very well.

Excellent. Yeah. And this is kind of what I wrote in this article as well on balancetourism.com. And I think what we’re trying to do with High-Yield Tourism is really help destinations to build these strategies and implement these strategies to really, you know, kind of almost like unleash the power of tourism to be a force for good on one hand, but also really increase the revenues so that all stakeholders really, you know, get the benefits, you know, of tourism. And that sometimes is not easy because it involves the supply and the demand mechanisms and they need to work in tandem. And it’s complex. It’s sometimes a lot easier to just drive numbers. And that’s what we see with many destinations. You know, but then you have the negative effects that can come, you know, if it’s not managed correctly. That’s why we’re so excited and so passionate about this concept of high-yield that we can really help destinations you tourism, kind of find that power that that tourism to, can have know, to change people’s lives. But when we talk about changing people’s lives, you yes, know, it’s on the destination side, obviously, people kind of making more money and the destination flourishing. But also we can change people’s lives through storytelling. And I know you’re a big proponent of storytelling to inspire people about a destination, especially about Nepal. You know, how do you think storytelling can be leveraged as a tool for high yield tourism?

Storytelling is incredibly important. And I know there’s a lot of talk around storytelling, but not a lot of doing around storytelling, unfortunately. And there’s a lot of talk about it. But what we are focusing on with the project that we started from Norway called Resonate is actually harnessing local pride as an inspiration to travel. So, you know, we’re trying to actually build sustainable destinations where people know what they want to sell and are able to talk about it through stories. And stories are a very powerful memory tool, you know, and an inspiration to travel. Even when we travel right now to another destination, we usually ask our friends stories from their travels. And that’s how we actually get inspired to travel. You know, they don’t really tell us, this hotel was nice. They usually say, I had a great experience. And that’s how it usually starts. Now, if you use that for local destinations to be able to tell their stories better and not just rely on internationals to come in, you know, somebody from the New York Times or somebody from Nat Geo or Lonely Planet to come and write it for them, then you’re actually creating really sustainable destinations in the long run, who actually know what they want to sell and actually will not sell what they don’t want to sell. And if you look at many destinations around the world, the mass tourism problems that are happening in Barcelona or Paris or Amsterdam are not happening for the right reasons. It’s not what the locals want to talk about their own country or about their own city. It is usually what has become the image of that city, right? So you need the local stories to actually be able to convey the right message. And if you get more and more travelers actually following local stories and traveling through that, that becomes an inspiration to spread the product. It also becomes an inspiration for, you know, getting different stakeholders making money, and hence the yield gets better again, you know? So you don’t have it just zeroed in on certain products. You actually spread it out really much better.

Absolutely, and that’s what we try to do with Mekong tourism. As you may know, we did this campaign, Mekong Moments, where we, you know, urge people to share their visual stories, photos and videos, put them on their social media, and we aggregate them back in into a cloud of stories that then inspire people to go into the Mekong region. It was very powerful. And as you said, these stories really built the brand of a destination and are powerful in hiring a marketing agency, you know, to kind of put this all into a box with a nice ribbon, which obviously is important. But again, the power of storytelling can really change how a destination is perceived.

And also, if you see locals telling their stories, they don’t think seasonality. You know, they have stories all the time. And, you know, combating seasonality, there’s a great way to combat seasonality is through storytelling as well. Because the locals will be telling stories and that inspiration will let people to come because of the stories and not because of what the weather is. You see what I mean? So and that is the way to combat it. And, you know, when you mentioned seasonality earlier on, I was just thinking something that how important it is in a country like Nepal, for example, if you didn’t, if you just worked within the season, you lose all your teams because the people need work. And the gainful employment that is provided by tourism, if it has a gap in between, the people will decide to go somewhere else and find another job. So it’s very important to actually combat that seasonality with some shoulder, at least, even if it’s not fully business all the time, at shoulder, even if it’s least, not fully business all the so that you time, retain people, you retain a critical mass of markets in so that the tourism, destination is interested, it is moving ahead, it is developing the products all the time. So it is so important. And so storytelling, the differentiation of products, focusing on different markets, all the things that I talked about are very important for getting that seasonality sorted out. And also for a business like ours, for example, if you have very stark seasonality, you’re eating it up on your overheads, or you have to just close shop. And that is no way of actually having better yield. Better yield means constant having business going on, right? And that is very important for the development of the industry. So all of this actually plays a very big role in actually providing, you know, this high yield, you know, that we’re talking about.

That’s beautiful. And I like when you said there’s stories going on all the time. If it is, you know, winter or summer or rainy or sunny, you know, there’s stories. Now, if I were to ask it is you know winter or summer or rainy or sunny you know there’s stories now if i were to ask you you know maybe in just one minute give me one story that would inspire me to come to Nepal and you know you have so many stories just pick one that is so powerful okay right here so next week oh no the week after that is a big festival here in Nepal, right? That is called Dasai. And this is one of, it’s like Christmas. It’s a festival of the Hindus that are celebrated to, you know, you go to your elders to get blessings. Now, what happens is that typical of big celebrations around the world by humans, there’s a lot of food involved. So in Nepal, because it’s also a religious festival for the Hindus, there’s a lot of sacrifice of animals. Now, the sacrifice of animals might be considered bad, especially by activists. But in Nepal, we eat all the parts of the animal. So the sacrifice is only a process of culling the animal, but the rest of it is all eaten. So it’s not just for decor, but it’s actually eaten, right? So that’s one thing. But because the Hindus are doing all these sacrifices, up in the mountains in the northeast of Kathmandu, the Sherpas and the Buddhist community out there pray for the souls of the animals that are being sacrificed by the Hindus.

So this might be one of the only few instances in the world of one philosophy balancing out the actions of another philosophy. And so you can go into the mountains to witness prayers happening in the monasteries every day, and the prayers are not happening for themselves to have better lives, it’s not for them to have great communities, it is for actually the souls of the animals that the Hindus are sacrificing in their festival. And that is quite a unique human thing that Nepal has that you can actually witness when you go up in the mountains. In fact, on the 10th of November, I’ve got two people going up into those mountains to actually witness that and seeing this amazing balance between two different philosophies. That’s powerful. Just a story. Thanks for sharing that, Raj. And as we wrap up here, I think it’s a good connection to my last and final question. And we always like to look a little bit into the future, you know, which areas of tourism should Nepal look to develop? And I think you mentioned spiritual. And I think as many people talk about adventure tourism and so on, which obviously is a great segment for Nepal. What is the potential of spiritual tourism for Nepal?

I think it’s very huge. I think you have to broaden the concept of spirituality and not just restrict it to basic philosophies like Hinduism or Buddhism or Muslim or, you know, Christianity. But if you take it beyond that into the real concept of spirituality, Nepal has actually a lot to offer to the world. I mean, this is a very fatalistic society, which understands how to deal with hardship. It is a very resilient society, actually, you know, recognized with the big disasters that we had, the earthquake, the change of government, you know, the civil war, you know, the pandemic. And I think from that stems this amazing sense of spirituality that Nepali people have, the friendliness, the way of looking at hardship, the way of looking at life. And I think that sort of spirituality, if you take it and connect it with local communities that people can actually interact with. I think we are talking about a massive potential of Nepal, which is, again, focused on transformative lifetime experiences for people, which is not just going and meditating. You see what I mean? Sometimes we think spirituality is just meditation and yoga and learning about philosophy. But if you take it as a human spirituality, then I think Nepal has got a lot to offer.

Great. Thank you so Raj. much, I think the conversation was great. And I look forward to return to Nepal and join your tours to learn more about this fantastic country. And again, I think, you know, all these examples that you mentioned, I think, can really drive high-yield. And again, it will then change people’s lives, not only for the people in the destination, but also for the people that visit the destination. So thank you so much. And I look forward to seeing you again in person very soon.

Thank you. it’s likewise absolutely.