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Declining tourist arrivals from India, China worries entrepreneurs

The declining number of Indian and Chinese tourists has worried tourism entrepreneurs expressing fears that the trend was likely to continue in coming months as well.

Tourist arrivals from India and China, which was observing sustained growth from more than three years, saw the negative growth in the month of August.

Tourism entrepreneurs attribute the decline in the business mainly on political instability, strictness in Tibet permit and growing number of relatively cheaper destinations.

The overall growth rate of meager 2.5 percent in the month of August is also one of the lowest growth rate recorded in last five years.

According to the entrepreneurs, they received huge number of cancellation at last moment as the political instability peaked during that time.

Suraj Lamichhane at Sita World Travels said, “Although the booking at present is better as the election dates have been pushed back, the question of materialization still exists.”

Comparatively, the month of August is considered lean period in the tourism. However, the statistics of the August in 2011 showed that Indian and Chinese visitors grew by 50 percent and 157.6 percent respectively.

Narad Luitel of Success Travels said that the drastic change in the growth rate was because of lack of promotional campaigns. “Other destinations are being promoted so well whereas our promotional campaigns are limited to the efforts of tourism entrepreneurs only,” he said that the international campaigns were very important as tourists are skeptical to visit because of the political instability.

The declining number of these segment and overall poor growth has pulled down the overall revenue by around 10 percent. Bharat Joshi, Resident Manager of Hotel Yak and Yeti said, the strictness in Tibet permit caused them the loss of 8 percent in the overall business as they received cancellation of 200 tourists.

“The booking for September and October is at 65 percent and 92 percent respectively but the movement of Indian tourist is minimal compared to last year,” he said.

Joshi along with other travel agents opined that the increasing number of cheaper destinations like Thailand and Malaysia was attracting Indian tourist to those places.

“The airfare to Nepal is still higher compared to other destinations making the overall package expensive,” said Luitel of Success Travels.

In case of Chinese tourists, the travel agents opined the lack of proper facility of guide, infrastructure and hotel service as other reasons for the slowdown. “Good number of Chinese tourists are interested to visited Nepal but the problem is we are not being able to offer quality service as per their expectation,” Lamichhane said. He further said that if the negative growth continues, the peak season was also likely to be effected.

The good news is despite the declining number, the average expenditure of tourist has not gone down. Laxmand Chand at Sathi Nepal Travels said the overall business of Chinese segment was good as they have started including short-trek and other adventure tourism activities. Joshi at Hotel Yak and Yeti said, “Despite the poor occupancy rate the average room rate was better than last year.”

The India tourists accounted more than one third of the total tourist arrivals of the country. More than 126,000 Indian tourists visited Nepal via air till August, 2012. Likewise, the other potential segment which started growing rapidly from last year already holds 8.3 market share of the total tourist arrivals. More than 31,000 Chinese visited Nepal till this period in 2012.

source:republica,5 Sept 2012