Kathmandu, Dec 31: Over 1 million foreign tourists visited Nepal in the year, 2023. The inflow of the tourists was via air. According to the statistics of the Nepal Tourism Board, 1,008,614 tourists visited Nepal as of 5:00 am today morning.
With this, the government’s goal of bringing in one million foreign tourists in 2023 has been fulfilled. In the budget of the current fiscal year, the government had mentioned that the number of foreign tourists visiting Nepal would be increased to 0ne million in 2023.
The tourism of the country hit badly by the COVID-19 pandemic has almost revived to its original state. The NTB says that tourism has recovered this year by almost 85 percent.
In 2019, around 1.2 million foreign tourists had visited the country. “The arrival of tourists this year is encouraging”, said NTB Director Maniraj Lamichhane. More than 1 million tourists have entered through the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu.
Likewise, president of Hotel Association of Nepal (HAN), Binayak Shah, expects the arrival of tourists to further increase in the coming days. If the government expands its partnership with the private sector, tourists will increase in the future.
It may be noted that the government has announced 2025 as the Visit Nepal Year. Furthermore, the year 2023 to 2032 is being celebrated as the tourism decade with a target of bringing in 3.5 million tourists.
Meanwhile, the number of Indian tourists has increased significantly this year. In 2019, 254,150 Indian tourists came to Nepal while the number is 317,481 this year. Likewise, the number of American tourists reached 99,985 this year. In 2019, 93,241 American tourists had arrived to visit Nepal.
Likewise, the number of Chinese tourists is gradually increasing ,with visit by 60,160 Chinese nationals this year. In 2019, 169,543 Chinese tourists had come to Nepal.
