National 5 (Spotlight Weekly)

Uncertain Growth

Despite bouncing back, the tourism industry is yet to feel relief from series of instability haunting the nation

By A CORRESPONDENT

Indian tourists : Encouraging increase

Although the country’s major political parties continue to announce disruptive programs and the Maoist continue to wreak havoc by announcing more severe programs, the tourist arrival has encouragingly continued to increase.

The last two weeks saw three day bandhs by the Maoists and two day bandhs by the mainstream political parties triggering panic among tourism entrepreneurs who say that a single day of strike could bring about a massive cancellations of reservations by the tourists.

However, the last week also brought a good news for the tourism industry with the beginning of daily services to Kathmandu by the Jet Air- India’s first private sector operator.

Despite the growing number of tourist arrival, the country’s tourism industry is yet to benefit. The star hotels are facing serious problems with low level of occupancy. The increase in the arrival of budget tourists has made little difference in overall contribution from the sector.

Figures released by the Department of Immigration (and communicated by the Nepal Tourism Board) indicate a 46 percent growth in the number of visitors coming to Nepal by air for the month of April 2004, which reached the total of 30,402 visitors over 20,799 last April.

“This is contributed by a healthy growth of 49 percent amongst third country and 39 percent amongst Indian visitors. A very positive note for the month being an increase in arrival from almost all the leading markets to Nepal,” states the press release from the Board.

Indian arrivals continued its double-digit growth followed by other Asian countries like Japan, China, ROC (Taiwan), Bangladesh, Israel and Sri Lanka. The Asian markets have also enhanced their market share to almost 45 percent in April.

The major long haul markets like Germany, UK, France and Australia performed positively for the month. Arrivals from UK went up by 7 percent, USA by 31 percent and German market was up by 19 percent. The French, Italian and the Dutch arrivals grew remarkably by 61 percent, 76 percent and 50 percent respectively.

”The possibility of additional growth in April 2004 has been badly affected by various factors. Firstly, the political crisis (Bandhs, strikes and closures) led to series of cancellations and shortening of trips by visitors willing to visit Nepal,” states the release.

A study conducted by the Nepal Tourism Board among 65 tourist service providers (travel agents, hotels, lodges, trekking agents) within Kathmandu shows that one day of strike leads to an average of 60 percent reservation cancellations by the tourists. The survey also indicated that the five star hotels of Kathmandu showed an average of 60 percent occupancy for the month. While the lodges seemed to have higher occupancy rate, the hotels from 4 to 2 star category had the occupancy of 38 percent for the month.

The arrival of tourists in the month of April was record high despite reductions in incoming flights in April in some sectors that added to slow down the arrivals. Royal Nepal Airlines, the flight schedule of country’s only national flag
carrier, disrupted frequently thanks to the lack of aircraft. Had the country’s incoming flights increased, the situation would have been much better.

Tek Bahadur Dangi, chief executive officer of the NTB, said that the absence of above mentioned problems would have substantially enhanced the growth further by 20 to 30 percent in April 2004. He further added that compared to 1999 figures the arrivals in April is still down by 15 percent. The total air arrival in April 1999 was 35,818.

“The existing growth of tourism has nothing to do with the star hotels. Star hotels need more quality tourism,” said Narendra Bajracharya. “I don’t think any quality tourist will come to visit Nepal when the country has been passing through a very critical phase of violence and political uncertainty.”