KATHMANDU, June 21: Tourist arrivals in May this year have increased by 9.6 percent compared to the figures of May 2017. According to the Department of Immigration, a total of 68,825 international tourists visited Nepal in May 2018. The overall tourist arrival figures for first five months from January to May period has reached to 454,855 with a healthy increment of 12.5 percent compared to the same period of 2017.
According to the data, number of Indian tourist arrival has gone up by 8.6 percent in May compared to the figures of same month last year. In May 2018, a total of 21,728 Indian tourist arrived Nepal while in May 2017, 20,011 tourists had visited Nepal.
Tourist arrivals up 11 percent in April
The data further shows that the overall arrivals from the South Asian Association for Regional Corporation (SAARC) countries have registered a positive growth of 2.2 percent over the same month last year. In the previous year 23,134 tourists from SAARC countries had visited Nepal while 23,651 SAARC tourists have visited Nepal in May, 2018. However, visitors from Bangladesh have decreased in May, 2018 by 49.3 percent with 1,191 tourists while 2,349 Bangladeshi tourists had visited Nepal in May, 2018.
On the other hand, tourist arrival from China has continued to soar as in the previous months and grew by 25.2 percent in May compared to the arrivals in the same month last year. In May last year, 7,309 Chinese tourists visited Nepal while 9,151 Chinese tourists visited Nepal the same month this year.
