McKinsey formula on tourism adopted

October 28: The cabinet, after a meeting with McKinsey and company, a global management consultancy firm, and senior government officials on 26 October, has decided to implement the recommendations of the consultancy company in the area of tourism.

The government has a USD 9.1m (approx. Nu 432m) project with McKinsey to find ways to accelerate Bhutan’s economic growth, create jobs for a majority of the 90,000 projected jobseekers in the current plan and improve delivery of services at a lower cost.

“Keeping in mind that implementation has always been our problem, the key outcome of the meeting is that we’re moving forward implementation in tourism on the ground and McKinsey will be helping us with it,” said GNH secretary Karma Tshiteem.

Under implementation in tourism will be areas like marketing, product development, ticketing and visa and also airports.

“In marketing, we’ll now be looking for big international tour operators, who specialise in high end niche market tourism to partner with to get more tourists to the country,” said Karma Tshiteem. He said that Bhutan’s tour operators had links with international tour operators but only the smaller ones.

McKinsey will actually also help in identifying these tour companies from good tourist market source countries and getting them in touch with the tourism council of Bhutan (TCB). Other international marketing gimmicks will also be implemented.

McKinsey will also help with product development in tourism, by opening up other areas and avenues, apart from the current mainly culture tourism.

“These new areas of emphasis will be on nature or eco tourism, involving local communities, wellness destination and MICE or meetings, incentives, conferences and events,” said Karma Tshiteem.

McKinsey will be helping in coming up with the right infrastructure and models to follow for the above and help in implementing them.

Others areas in tourism will be simplifying and easing ticketing and visa collection procedures to reduce bottlenecks for tourists.

Small and medium enterprises will also be encouraged to grow in the tourism sector.

McKinsey has also identified with the government plans of domestic airports and reemphasised Yonphula, Bumthang and Gelephu airports for successful tourism. Yonphula in Trashigang will receive first priority. “Basically, we’re looking at the best way of integrating this domestic airport with the implementation of the new tourism strategy in the country” said the secretary.

The implementation for these will be mainly by the tourism council of Bhutan in coordination McKinsey.

“What’ll be happening is that all these development in the tourism will be implemented in a coordinated manner at various level for them to succeed,” said the secretary.

Right after the meeting, McKinsey and TCB will be taking the cabinet decision and then making a detailed blueprint or plan of implementation around it, involving ground studies and technical details and then be implementing them.

“Unlike a normal consultant, what we’re getting are not just reports, but we’ll be seeing actual implementation on the ground and will also soon start feeling and seeing their effects,” said Karma Tshiteem.

In health, the cabinet approved the use of technology for increasing the quality of medical cares at a lower cost of delivery and at a faster rate.

The programs operate on the two points that not all patients seeing a doctor actually need to see him and, in many cases, the doctors can be replaced either through telecommunication or a database.

“A patient, who doesn’t require an physical examination by the doctor, can get the information and treatment from the health worker, using technologies like computers with preset questions on symptoms or doctors can communicate through phones,” said Karma Tshiteem.

He said that this would reduce the workload on the few doctors that we have and also enable more treatment using technology.

Karma Tshiteem said that implementation for all these projects would be completed within the next 20 months and more decisions and implementations would follow.

Though not decided for implementation, presentations were also made on opportunities in construction, cultural industries, vocational education and others.

Tourism is the main key area, along with others like health, education and agriculture

source: kuensel