April 2005
PERSONALITY

Pawan Tuladhar
Changing Tack to Stay in Tourism

If you try to make a list of all the businesses and firms in which Pawan Tuladhar has been either an employee or a partner during his 20 year long career, it may run into several pages. Finally he became stable as a tour operator selling tour packages around the Himalayan region and is doing good business. Though many tour operators are complaining of sluggish business and Tuladhar too has faced similar problems, he is not complaining much. He is in search of a new method to carry on doing the same business while at the same time venturing into a number of other fields.

Tuladhar dropped out of grade 12 as he married on his parents' insistence and had to take on responsibility of a family after marriage. As his father already owned two businesses (real estate and dealership of kitchenware) it would have been logical for him to join his father but Tuladhar ventured out on his own as his elder brother was already helping his father.

While searching for a suitable work he first joined a friend's firm distributing liquor, then a tile factory belonging to the same friend. Later he partnered with another friend and started a business of participating in smaller types of government tenders for various types of jobs while his partner's other firm would bid for bigger tenders.

Such job-hopping (he changed his job almost every six months) made him a laughing stock among his friends. Whenever they met him they would ask him what his next job would be. Still he was not perturbed. "I was learning the business moving around in that fashion,” he recalls.

But in this process of leaving one job and taking up another, Tuladhar never sought any advice from anyone, not even his family. "If I believe in something, I go in for that though I debate on its pros and cons with myself before taking the final decision, and I still have this habit," he says.

Finally, he became stable in the tourism business. And the way he landed in this business was coincidental. He had some friends who were running a trekking agency. Once Tuladhar had left his former job and was free, his friends asked him if he could lead a group of trekkers. The reason for the friends to ask him was that he was good in English. "And I took on the work not for the money but for the experience. And that proved a turning point in my career," he recalls.

He spent some time with his friends helping them with their business. He was made to draft letters and faxes due to his good English. It was a blessing for Tuladhar, because that way he learned the business in greater details. "And soon I saw that though they were doing pretty well, they were not able to make use of all the opportunities available," he says.

Thus, in 1991, he started his own travel agency with two other partners and went into it full-fledged since 1993.

His focus was in arranging trips to Tibet . As he recalls, the travel agencies then were not so professional and were guided mostly by short-term vision.

Tuladhar first gained extensive knowledge about the Tibet business and saw that there were possibilities to reduce costs. Thus he was able to reduce the prices. The trick was in an extensive promotional campaign and arranging group visits for which the Tibetan authorities granted and extended visas more easily. This way many budget travellers got the opportunity to go to Tibet , which was then a more sought after destination than it is today.

But after two years of good business, Tuladhar and his partners had to stop it because other operators too were able to learn the trick. Meanwhile, the partnership broke up two times and in 2001 he set up his own company and started concentrating on only the high-end business, catering mainly to US clients. "Now I handle only about 250 clients a year, but they are ready to spend good money if the service is really good," he says.

Explaining the reason why he was attracted to tourism, Tuladhar says that in other businesses the work was not regular and the rewards were not so good. "In tourism, I get both. Moreover, I earn in foreign currency which gives me pride, and I always meet new people whereas in other businesses you have to deal with the same people repeatedly," he adds.

For any business to be successful, you have to be well aware of how your customers behave in a certain situation. It is more so in tourism. Therefore, catering to diverse markets is not a good idea, says Tuladhar. Giving examples from his own experience, he recalls that between 1993 and 1995, he extensively travelled in the US studying the people there - their culture, their mentality, their food. That learning helped him a lot, as his business grew tremendously since 1996.

One important characteristic of US tourists is that they are not very price conscious - they are quality conscious. For example, they are very finicky about hygiene, he points out and says, "They use tissue paper even while handling the door knob. Therefore, I have become finicky about hygiene in my business. When they notice that, they get really impressed with me and my company." So, his company provides not only filtered water and toilets, but also the toilet paper, whereas some other operators try to save on the cost of the paper, he points out. "This involves a little extra cost, but the impression it leaves in the mind of the client is much more valuable for a long term business."

Giving example of another important characteristic of the US tourists, Tuladhar says that in the US when one goes to a restaurant like McDonald's, he pays for one cup of coffee and gets as much as he likes to drink, but in Europe he has to pay for coffee on a per cup rate. Therefore, when the tour operators charge the US clients a per piece rate for trivial things like toilet paper or coffee, they regard it as being money-minded, though the European client may find it quite normal.

Now, because of the bad publicity that the country is getting in the international media, tourists are coming in much less numbers than the actual potential. So, Tuladhar is following two strategies to remain in the business.

In one of the strategies, he is diversifying into other fields, and in the other, he is developing new methods to benefit from the still unreduced desire of the US tourists to go to Tibet .

Under the first strategy, he has already entered into the business of exporting handicrafts, again to the US market. "I want to develop it as a web-based activity and sales representatives have already lined up in the US ," he says. To complement this business, he has also set up a separate company-Himalayan Technologies-in partnership with some friends, specialised in web designing and developing web-based applications. The company has already made a foothold in the country as the first to bring wireless networking into the country.

Explaining the logic for selecting these businesses, Tuladhar says that being internet-based, these are less likely to be affected by the disturbances in the country.

In the second strategy, he will be operating Tibet tours without requiring the clients to come to Nepal . In another facet of the strategy, he is developing a website (mysticalasia.com) to link all the adventure travel operators of Asia so that he can benefit from such travels anywhere in Asia no matter who handles the trips. "This way, I will be less dependent on Nepal and still remain in this business."