Tourist arrivals increase

It seems that Nepal Tourism Board's (NTB) regional marketing is paying off. Despite global recession and fall in global tourist movements, the South Asian market -- including India and China -- has pushed up the tourist arrivals in April.
Tourist arrivals in April -- in comparison to the same month last year -- increased by 15.8 per cent and touched 37,819. Last April, the number of tourist arrivals was 32,665, figures released by the Immigration Office, Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), reveal.
For the first time in 2009, April witnessed a positive growth in visitor arrivals to Nepal, in a way challenging the worldwide decline in tourist arrivals. The entire Asian region registered a positive growth except Japan, said NTB.
Visitor arrivals from every market in South Asia registered a positive growth. India -- which occupies the largest share in visitor arrivals in Nepal -- recorded a whopping 27.3 per cent growth. Similarly, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh witnessed positive growths of 61.2 per cent, 29.4 per cent and 1.3 per cent, respectively.
Other Asian source markets -- China, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea and Singapore -- regained the upward trend with 27.3 per cent, 68.5 per cent, 20.9 per cent, 73 per cent and 61.3 per cent of growth, respectively.
However, arrivals from Japan witnessed a marginal negative growth of 1.3 per cent.
The entire Europe and Oceania region registered a robust growth of 23.3 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively, in comparison to the same month last year. However, France and the Netherlands registered a negative growth of 3.7 percent and 9.4 per cent, respectively.
Arrivals from Canada and the USA also registered a positive growth of 20.2 percent and 5.8 per cent, respectively.
The increase in visitor arrivals reflects and reinforces the resilient nature of the tourism economy which can play a crucial role towards recovery of countries that are dependent on tourism. The remarkable growth in visitors' arrival from India and China -- Nepal's immediate neighbours -- and other major players in the intra-regional tourism underscores the need to focus on regional markets at a time of the economic crisis.
A total of 41,439 foreign tourists departed from TIA in April 2009. The number of Nepali arrivals stood at 43,444 while 45,886 Nepalis departed from TIA in April.