Saturday, July 20, 2019

Tourist arrivals up, income down

Income from the travel sector under the service account increased by 9.7 per cent in the first 11 months of the last fiscal year 2018-19, but the tourist arrivals has increased by more than the income.
According to central bank, Nepal earned a total of Rs 68.63 billion from the travel industry against Rs 62.57 billion in the same period of a fiscal year ago. In 2018, a total of 1.17 million tourists visited Nepal via both air and land routes while a total of 585,531 tourists have visited Nepal in first half of 2019.
Though, the tourist income has been increasing, the average length of stay of tourists and their per day spending has declined. According to the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) statistics 2018 published by the Tourism Ministry, the average length of stay stands at 12 days, while the average per day spending per tourist has dropped to $44.
The average spending of tourists in the country has also dropped by 22.73 per cent in 2018, the data revealed, adding that the three-year development plan (2016- 2018) had aimed to increase the length of stay of foreigners to 14 days by 2018, which ranged from eight to 13.5 days in the past. “However, the government has failed to achieve that target as well.”
The plan has also targeted to raise the contribution of travel in the country’s GDP to 10.3 per cent, while the current contribution stands at 3.5 per cent.

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