Pandemic Impact on the Travels and Tourism Sector of Nepal

The travel and tours enterprise were badly affected due to pandemics. In the aftermath of high restrictions on human movement, travel-based entrepreneurs were highly impacted due to lockdown. Due to pandemic, highly impacted into earning-saving, lack of supportive working conditions, lower self-capacity, and lack of recovery budget and policies, the travel and tours-based entrepreneurs were highly impacted. The study reflected the impact of pandemics on travel and tours, major constraints, and a possible way forward to sustaining. The research explores what are the major existing practices of sustaining travel and tours entrepreneurs during pandemics, what factors can contribute to building bounce-back capacities of travel and tours entrepreneurs’ sustainability. Above forty-four, snowball-based sampling was done from major travel and tours entrepreneurs, Pokhara-Nepal. A structure-based open-ended questionnaire, key informant interviews, and in-person-based discussion were applied in the method of study. Used the content analysis along with a recap of the research question, undertake bracketing to identify biases, operationalize variables with develop a coding, and code the data with undertaking analysis while qualitative analysis, and multiple regression facilitated on quantitative analysis to finalize the discussion. The study reflects that self-saving, social support, state and financial institutions recovery support, social behavior and change communication, full vaccination practices, and self-accountable tourist behavior are highly expectable conditions to the sustainability of travel and torus entrepreneurship in the learning area. The study concludes that self-saving capacity can contribute to bounce-back capacity for every entrepreneur. Social support and socioeconomic recovery packages were also contributing to sustaining travel and tours in the study area. Self-saving condition and capacity is higher bounce back capacity compared to non-saved entrepreneurs in the study area. Social support, socioeconomic recovery practices, and recovery packages from state and financial institutions were not at the higher level as expected.

Exploring the School Stakeholders’ Understanding and Knowledge About Information and Communication Technology Ict and its Application in Improving Management Functions: A Comparative Study in the Urban Context

This study aimed to explore the application of information and communication technology (ICT) in school management functions and finding the status of the ICT resources at private secondary schools in Karachi, Pakistan. This research explored the understanding of the school stakeholders (principals, administer, finance officer, IT officer and teachers) that how far ICT has assisted to bring improvements in school management and what strategies used to overcome the challenges encountered by the school stakeholders while attaining school management functions (SMFs). The finding revealed that the private secondary schools has installed numerous ICT resources, and the level of ICT integration was intermediary. ICT has encouraged the administration and finance staff to upgrade the existing data management platforms, as it has eased to acquire, store, retrieve large data in just a few clicks, and bring a major shift in the attainment of school management functions like communication, record keeping and reporting. It has also assisted to enforce security and maintain the discipline of school in the form of security CCTV cameras and electronic attendance systems. However, numerous barriers had huge effect on the job performance of the senior stakeholders and efficiency of school management. School stakeholders were quite proficient, who use different strategies to overcome the challenges, where the development of self-sufficient individuals through capacity building sessions was the ultimate goal of school principals. The strategies used to overcome the challenges were found helpful. Overall, ICTs has revolutionized the working environment of school management and improved its efficiency. It is recommended that school management must ensure barrier-free ICT application and arrangement of professional development workshops to enhance the ICT skills. Finally, this study offers empirical evidences to the schools and suggests ways to implement appropriate strategies to overcome the challenges and help them to ensure barrier-free ICT application in the school management.