Despite being the first month of the Visit Nepal (VN) 2020 campaign, the number of tourist arrivals in the country declined by 33 per cent in January.
According to the Department of Immigration (DoI), a total of 67,020 tourists from different countries visited Nepal in January. However, during the same period last year a total of 91,793 tourists had visited Nepal, Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) stated.
“It is just the beginning of the year. We do have plans for the coming days, so, hopefully the number of tourists along with quality tourists will increase in coming days,” said Dhananjay Regmi, CEO of NTB.
January has already turned into an unfavourable month for the national campaign VN 2020 due to the recent incidents of tourist bus accident, avalanche in Annapurna region, death of Indian tourists and recent announcement of the Chinese government to halt outbound tourist groups.
As China is the second largest market for the country’s tourism sector, the fall in the number of Chinese tourists is likely to affect the domestic tourism industry.
However, tourism entrepreneurs have said promotional activities in China should be halted for a few months and country should focus on other possible destinations for the moment. As per Regmi, NTB is postponing all its promotional activities in China for the short term and is preparing to add more activities for other countries.
Amid this, tourism entrepreneurs have suggested the tourism board to add activities in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Gulf countries.
