Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, January 3:

Despite ongoing political turmoil, visitors arriving Nepal by air has registered a growth of nine per cent in 2004 in comparison to the last year, thanks to a remarkable contribution by the non-Indian tourist segment. However, the Indian segment that constitutes about two third of total tourists traffic declined by one per cent.

A total of 288,356 tourists visited Nepal during the period, which is a growth from 265,600 tourists in 2003. The growth was contributed by an increase of 13 per cent amongst the non-Indian visitors. On the other hand, arrivals in December 2004 has declined by 14 per cent with a net loss of 25 per cent visitors from non-Indian segment while the Indian arrivals grew up by seven per cent in comparison to the same month last year, according to the figures released by the Immigration Office, Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) and compiled by Nepal Tourism Board (NTB). A total of 22,242 visitors came to Nepal during the month of December. Compared to the last year, tourist arrivals in 2004 however was positive. The only countries with negative growth are Japan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and India. The higher growths are observed from France, Italy, China, Spain, Australia, Taiwan and Canada. Arrivals from the US have grown by five per cent, the UK by 10 per cent, Germany by eight per cent and the Netherlands by 20 per cent. The first eight months of 2004 showed a continuous growth in visitors’ arriving to Nepal. Arrivals in the first quarter in particular grew by 50 per cent where as in the second quarter it went up by 25 per cent. But after series of street protests in the capital and September 1 incident of Iraq, the arrivals started to recede. The blockades, protests, demonstrations and closures of industries as well as travel advisories of some tourist generating countries damaged the arrival trend in the second half of the year. Both the market segment started to decline but Indian market gradually picked up and even increased in December. The year 2004 would have ended up very positively in tourist arrivals had the incident of September 1st not occurred. Since such incidents are rare and unfortunate, 2005 is expected to perform easy double-digit growth in the light of increasing travellers’ confidence to Nepal and increasing air links from various countries, states NTB. In order to understand the changing image and preference towards Nepal as holiday destination among the Indian visitors, NTB carried out a survey among the departing Indian visitors in December 2004. It was observed that Indian visitors still have high regard for Nepal as holiday destination.

The survey states that there is a great influence of repeated-visit and recommendation from friends and family to travel to Nepal. Easy accessibility, warm and hospitable people and pilgrimage still remain as major attractions for the Indian tourists to travel to Nepal.