Kathmandu, July 21, 2018: According to Nepal Tourism Board (NTB), the inflow of foreign tourists (via both air and land routes) in Nepal increased by 13 per cent in the first six months of 2018.
The data shows that the major inflow of tourists is from India, China, the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK) and Sri Lanka. The foreign tourist arrival chart shows 96,372 Indian and 71,379 Chinese tourists. This is an increment in inflow of Indian and Chinese tourists by 8 per cent and 37 per cent respectively compared to the corresponding period of the previous year. Also, a total of 520,014 foreign tourists visited Nepal in between January and June this year against 460,304 foreigners visiting the country in the corresponding period of 2017. However, inflow of tourists from the UK and Sri Lanka dropped by 7.1 per cent and 3.7 per cent to 27,792 and 18,890, respectively. In addition, the NTB statistics show that more than 53 per cent of foreign tourists in Nepal hail from Asia while 19 per cent are from Europe.
As per the officials of NTB, Nepal’s tourism industry has been gradually booming in recent years owing to political stability and different tourism-centric initiatives taken by the government and the private sector.
“Foreign tourists seem more interested to visit Nepal in the recent times. Similarly, we have been developing good tourism packages in the country and promoting Nepal’s tourism abroad aggressively,” said Deepak Raj Joshi, chief executive officer of NTB.
Nepal has also announced ‘Visit Nepal 2020’ to promote the country’s tourism industry and has set a target to bring in two million foreign tourists per annum by 2020.
, the inflow of foreign tourists (via both air and land routes) in Nepal increased by 13 per cent in the first six months of 2018.){kind=link}