Marginal decline in tourist arrivals

Kathmandu, May 4:

The consecutive growth in tourist arrivals has been slightly slowed down with a marginal decline of one per cent in arrivals in April.

According to the arrival figures released by Immigration Office at Tribhuvan International Airport, a total of 32,665 tourists came to Nepal via air route in April, which is 359 less than 33,024 tourists in the same month last year.

However, European sector has remained unchanged with almost the same figure as compared to the April 2007. The arrivals from France grew up by 21 per cent, Austria with 20 per cent, the Netherlands and Israel with 28 per cent respectively.

Arrivals from Switzerland grew by 66 per cent, Spain by 25 per cent, but UK, Sweden and Germany decreased by 20 per cent, 31 per cent and 20 per cent, respectively.

There are some significant growths recorded during the month with arrivals from Australia and New Zealand posted a significant rise of 51 per cent. Closely following the trend are Canada and USA with the growth of 25 per cent.

The arrival figure shows a fall of 18 per cent from the Asian countries. SAARC countries arrival dropped by 14 per cent where India has the share of 19 per cent in overall fall. Bangladesh on the other hand posted an extraordinary growth of 60 per cent.

While contemplating the arrival figures, the main reason for decrease in arrivals might be the prediction of uncertainty in the minds of travellers due to CA polls. Hopefully the trend could be expected in the days to come with the successful completion of historic CA polls.

Analysing the total number of arrivals in the first four months, it shows that 1,28,802 tourists came to Nepal with an increment of 11.15 per cent than total arrivals of the same period last year.