Tourist season kicks off in Nepal

Healthy arrivals from major source markets propelled tourists’ inflow via air by 16.8 percent in October. The country welcomed 73,264 tourists in October, the highest ever figure in a single month.

The latest statistics of Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) show that a total of 443,108 visitors entered Nepal in the first 10 months of 2011, up by 21.7 percent compared to the same period last year.

Nepal’s major source markets—India and China—have the largest share in the first 10 months’ arrival figure. The countries now account for about 36 percent of the total arrivals. The NTB statistics show arrivals from India grew by 42.4 percent, while that of China surged by 66.7 percent. Largely propelled by strong Indian arrivals, number of tourists from the SAARC region grew by 33.7 percent.

In October, arrivals from Asia (excluding South Asia) saw an overall increase of 40 percent. Except for Malaysia, almost all the markets recorded positive growth, with China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand posting growth of 105.9 percent, 7.3 percent, 5.7 percent, 29.4 percent and 23.6 percent, respectively.

As far as the long-haul markets are concerned, Europe registered an overall growth of 15.1 percent compared to the same month last year with a total arrival of 34,166 tourists. Among the European countries, arrivals from Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and UK went up by 19.3 percent, 25.5 percent, 20.7 percent, 15.8 percent, and 7.3 percent, respectively. However France and the Netherlands registered negative growth of 3.9 percent and 17.1 percent, respectively, compared to the same month in 2010.

The official figures show an overall decrease of 5.4 percent in arrivals from the Oceania region, with Australia and New Zealand recording -0.2 percent and -30.4 percent growths. Canada also recorded a negative growth of 0.2 percent, whereas arrivals from the United States went up by 5.4 percent. A total of 69,115 foreign tourists departed from TIA in October 2011