Tourism recovers almost to pre-pandemic level

By A Staff Reporter,Kathmandu, June 4: Tourism numbers seem to have almost recovered to the pre-pandemic levels.

According to the Department of Immigration, 77,703 tourists came to Nepal by air in May 2023. In May 2019, this number was 78,329. 

This means that tourist numbers have almost fully bounced back to what they were before COVID-19 struck the world.

The year immediately before the pandemic, 2019, was one of the best years for tourism in Nepal. A total of 1,197,191 foreign tourists entered the country by land and air that year. That was the highest number the country had ever recorded.

But in 2020, the year the coronavirus outbreak began in Nepal, the number of foreign tourists plummeted to 230,085. In 2021, it fell still further to 150,962. The year 2022 saw a slight uptick to 614,869.

To revitalise the tourism sector of the country, the government announced in its budget for the Fiscal Year 2023/24 that it would celebrate the 10 years from 2023 to 2033 as the tourism decade and shared its intention to bring 1 million tourists into the country in 2023. 

The latter is in line with the target unveiled by the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) last year and one that it has since maintained is possible by attracting visitors from Asia.

In the first five months of this year though, 404,234 foreigners came to Nepal with March seeing the highest influx at 99,428 and January seeing the lowest at 55,074.

Meanwhile, according to Mani Raj Lamichhane, director of the Research, Planning and Monitoring Department at NTB, the largest number of foreign tourists who came to Nepal last month came from India, 36,575 to be exact. 

The second largest number, 8,545, came from the United States of America. China, the United Kingdom and Australia rounded out the top five with 4,667, 2,927 and 2,184 tourists respectively.