Nepal Tourism Board on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding with KK Super Mart, a chain store in Malaysia, to promote Nepal as the favoured destination to Malaysian citizens.

Dhananjay Regmi, chief executive officer of Nepal Tourism Board, said the joint promotion initiative would penetrate the minds of millions of loyal customers of KK Super Mart and create mass awareness about Nepal and its tourism product to those who are potential visitors to Nepal.

The agreement was signed by Suresh Adhikari, secretary of the Tourism Ministry and Dato Seri Tiong King Sing, Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Malaysia, on behalf of their respective governments.

As per the agreement, KK Super Mart will promote Nepal through all its outlets in Malaysia.

KK Super Mart has more than 664 outlets in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Melaka, Negeri, Sembilan, Johar, Pahang and Sarawak.

Similarly, as per the agreement, KK Super Mart will play the promotional videos provided by NTB at all its outlets for three months—starting from January to March.

NTB will bear no financial and non-financial liability to KK Super Mart for the promotional video screening.

In 2019, Nepal received 21,329 Malaysian tourists. The number dropped to 3,460 in 2020 and 331 in 2021 largely due to Covid-19-related restrictions, according to government statistics.