Source::Xinhua
The Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) has confirmed that the nation in general, especially the tourism industry has struggled to recover from COVID-19 with foreign travelers in 2021 declining 35 percent from the last year. The NTB has confirmed that Nepal has been visited 150,962 foreign tourists in 2021, a drop of 34.4% from 2020 with 230,085 tourists.
The main cause of the downhill decline has been the drastic drop in Chinese tourists with only 6,196 tourists, a paltry amount to the 134,281 tourists from 2019 and even worse considering that 'VisitNepal2020' campaign had hopes of increasing Chinese tourism to half-a-million tourists in 2020. As regular flights are still suspended over COVID-19, there is little hope for a resurgence in tourism.
But there is a silver lining to all of this situation. While the overall number of tourism fell in Nepal by 34.4% especially from China, other countries have increased the number of tourists entering Nepal. About 22,853 US travelers and 64,673 Indian travelers have visited Nepal last year, constituting an increase of 28.6 percent and 60.3 percent respectively from previous years.
This also correlated to the record number of permits (408) to scale Mt. Everest this year and 34,000 travelers visiting Nepal for trekking purposes in 2021, far higher than 2020. Khum Bahadur Subedi, president of the Trekking Agencies; Association of Nepal has said, "The tourism industry as a whole continued to suffer in 2021 and the government needs to continue the policy of welcoming vaccinated foreign tourists to ensure the survival of the industry."
Photo Credit: [ding lei / Pexels]
