KATHMANDU, DECEMBER 12
In a sign of gradual recovery, Tsering Palzor Sherpa, owner of Café Himalaya in Dingboche, catered to over 50 customers per day during the trekking season of October and November this year.
Sherpa owns one of the few cafés that serve hot coffee and cakes at an altitude of over 4,110 metres. Despite having to shut his business for over a year due to COVID-19, the increasing flow of tourists in the region over the past months has fuelled his expectation of better days ahead.
"Although this season was an improvement compared to previous years, tourist numbers have not recovered completely.
We used to serve between 80 and 100 tourists a day in 2019 and the number reached about 50 per day between October and November," Sherpa said, adding that he hoped to serve more tourists in the coming season.
As many as 20,964 tourists, including domestic and international trekkers, visited the Sagarmatha National Park in the first four months (mid-July to mid-November) of the fiscal year 2022-23, indicating a steady recovery in terms of tourism activity in the Everest region. Despite losing potential customers as a result of unpredictable weather conditions that left thousands of tourists stranded in Ramechhap and Lukla in October, hoteliers of Khumbu rejoiced with more influx of tourists than expected, stakeholders say.
As per the data provided by the SNP, the number of tourists arriving in the region jumped from 385 in mid-July to 13,158 in mid-November.
The total number of visitors included 1,673 domestic tourists, 1,481 tourists from SAARC region, and 16,779 from other countries.
A total of 26,474 tourists had entered the region in the last fiscal year, an overwhelming increase compared to the arrival of just 4,819 tourists in fiscal 2019- 20 and 8,195 in 2020-21. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 53,692 tourists had visited the SNP in the fiscal year 2018-19.
Meanwhile, Ngima Lhamu Sherpa, owner of Amadablam Base Camp Lodge, said her business had recovered to the pre-pandemic level. "Ama Dablam being a famous mountain among visitors sees a good number of tourists during peak seasons, but it is not listed in everyone's itinerary who come to see Mt Everest.
Having to shut down our business for a year due to the lockdown was difficult for us, but we cannot complain about our current situation as our lodge witnessed a good season this year compared to other lodges in the area. However, there is no denying that the tourism activity in the region could improve further," Ngima told The Himalayan Times.
According to Nilhari Bastola, president of the Trekking Agencies' Association of Nepal, over 500,000 tourists entered the country between January and November, a better-than-expected recovery for the country's tourism sector.
"Although we had expected tourism activities in the country to recover by 2024 as compared to 2019, the influx of tourists in October and November has encouraged local businesses and hoteliers.
"There is a high possibility of tourism inflow increasing in the coming days and we expect the sector to reach its normal levels in 2023," he said.
Meanwhile, the SNP has collected over Rs 46 million in revenue from the distribution and sale of forest resources, tourism activities, fines, and others, in the first four months of this fiscal.
The SNP had collected over Rs 163 million in revenue in the fiscal year 2018-19.
A version of this article appears in the print on December 13, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
