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Himalaya Airlines, a Nepal - China joint venture international airline, launches their yet another service connecting Kathmandu to Changsha (the capital of central China’s Hunan province). As the airlines explores new markets before the onset of VNY 2020, it aims at promoting and capturing the outbound tourism potential of the province into Nepal. With the new service, Nepalis will have a convenient, economical and direct connection to explore this new destination in China.
Right after Guiyang, Himalaya introduced their newest flight route between Kathmandu and Changsha. Attracting numerous tourists towards the city every year, Changsha is one of the major tourist cities of the Country. Himalaya flies every Wednesday from Kathmandu to Changsha and back; Himalaya is the only airline operating direct flights between the two cities.
The maiden flight departed from Tribhuwan International Airport (TIA) at 11:03 am (local time) on November 20, 2019 and touched down Changsha Huanghua International Airport (CSX) at 5:19 pm (local time). The return flight departed from CSX at 6:28 pm (local time) and touched down TIA at 9:23 pm (local time) on the same day.
“Apart from Beijing and Guiyang, we believe Kathmandu needs more connectivity to other cities of China; in order to take optimum advantage of China’s travel potential. We are very happy to add yet another route in China to strengthen the Nepal - China connectivity. With these newly added routes, we are deepening our trans-border network by providing key links for business and leisure travellers of both China and Nepal.” said Vijay Shrestha, Vice President – Administration.
China has placed Nepal as a new leisure destination, which is one of the driving reasons for increased Chinese visitors into Nepal over the past few years. The number of Chinese nationals travelling to Nepal has grown steadily over the last several years. In October, 2019 China held the first ranking with 13,489 visitors owning the share of 10.45% in the total tourist arrivals. If we look at the overall year of 2019 (January to October), China holds the second largest tourism market for Nepal with 134,281 visitors showing the growth of 9.2% over the same period of 2018.
President, Zhou Enyoung shared, “We are increasing our presence in China by adding Guiyang and Changsha in addition to our existing Beijing flights. Passengers have now another two more gateways between Nepal and China. The routes announced till now are the first of many future possibilities to further develop our Himalaya network, offering customers new routes and more robust year-round schedules.”
With this newly added KTM - CSX connectivity, H9 expects to contribute its own share to tourism economy of Nepal in a big way and strengthen the Nepal – China bilateral relationship in every possible way.
