Kathmandu, August 3

Some western countries that had issued negative travel advisories for Nepal immediately after the devastating earthquake of April 25 have lifted the warnings and updated them with geo-specific advices.

United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, the United States, Finland, Italy and New Zealand have recently changed their travel advisory status to a geo-specific advice in line with the UN-World Tourism Organisation (UN-WTO)’s code of conduct for travel advisories.

Neighbouring India and some other nations like Switzerland and Japan had never issued negative travel advisory for Nepal.

Nepal has been lobbying with the western source countries through their diplomatic missions in Nepal to soften their travel advisories citing that only 15 per cent of the tourist destinations were damaged due to the earthquake.

Negative travel advices issued by western source countries have adversely affected the tourism sector of Nepal, as many of the visitors from the western world have cancelled their trips to Nepal.

The fact that insurance firms would not cover the insurance of people travelling to countries that have been issued negative travel advice had further discouraged people from visiting Nepal, as per Robin Boustead of Great Himalayan Trail Alliance.

The UN-WTO has been repeatedly putting these matters on its agenda and called for governments and media to provide proportional and geo-specific information rather than blanket negative advices. However, many countries have yet to change the travel advices as per the code of conduct of UN-WTO. Many countries, including France, Sweden, Denmark, Spain and Poland, are still maintaining negative advisories.

The recent report of European Centre for Ecological and Agricultural Tourism regarding travel advisories for Nepal by western countries had advised Nepal to lobby with respective countries that have issued negative travel advices to change the advisories as per UN-WTO’s code of conduct.