Increase in Visitor Arrivals

The figures released by Immigration Office, Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) reveal that visitor arrivals in the month of Feb 2013, compared to the same month last year, have increased by 6% to 45,123.

Arrivals from Asia (other than South Asia) have also recorded healthy growth of 46% in aggregate with mixed performance from the individual countries. There has been robust growth of 135% in visitor arrivals from China which is one of the fastest growing tourist markets for Nepal. Visitor arrivals from Malaysia and Singapore and have registered a positive growth of 288.1%, and 111.9% respectively. However, visitor arrivals from Japan, South Korea and Thailand have registered negative growth of 20.1%, 29.4%, and 0.3% respectively.

The arrivals from South Asian region have recorded negative growth of 15.2% with Pakistan (44.3%) and Sri Lanka (35.3%) registering positive growth. Visitor arrivals from India, which is the largest source market for Nepal witnessed decline by 18.2%. Visitor arrivals from Bangladesh have declined by 5.3%.

European markets registered negative growth of 5.5% with major destinations showing mixed reaction in terms of visitor arrivals. Arrivals from Germany and the Netherlands are up by 8.3% and 21% respectively while arrivals from UK, France, Italy, Switzerland and Russia have recorded negative growth of 6%, 13.7%, 31.8%, 8.7% and 8% respectively.

Tourist arrivals from USA, Canada and New Zealand have increased by 11.2 %, 42.2% and 44.8% respectively. However arrivals from Australia have decreased by 5.5%.

A total of 48,783 foreign tourists departed from TIA in Feb 2013.The number of Nepalese arrivals stood at 58,379 while 70,635 Nepalese departed from TIA in Feb 2013.

(With input from Nepal Tourism Board).