Earlier, in the wake of the global financial crisis, travel experts had predicted that fewer numbers of tourists would be coming to Nepal throughout the year. But figures from the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) showed tourist arrivals for the month of April standing at 37,819, compared with 32,665 for the same month last year. "The figure in a way has challenged the worldwide decline in tourist arrivals," Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) said in a statement issued on Sunday.
The data compiled by NTB showed strong growth in the number of Indian visitors. A total of 8,303 Indians visited Nepal in April - up 27.3 percent. The number of British tourists coming to Nepal also went up by 38.9 percent, to 3,509, while the arrival of German visitors reached 1,858 in April - up 38.3 percent.
Even tourist arrivals from the US-- another country hard hit by the global economic downturn -- posted a growth of 5.8 percent. NTB said a total of 2,693 Americans came to Nepal in April, compared with 2,545 of last year. However, arrivals from some of the European countries like France, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria continued to decline in April.
Among Asian countries, arrivals from all countries, except Japan, posted a positive growth. The number of Chinese visitors went by up by 27.3 percent, while the number of South Korean tourists went up by 73 percent.
"The remarkable growth in visitors´ arriving from India and China, our immediate neighbors and major players in our intraregional tourism sector, underscores the need to focus in the regional markets at the time of economic crisis," NTB said.
Despite the growth in the arrival of tourists in the month of April, however, the overall number of foreign visitors coming to Nepal in 2009 fell by eight percent, to 117,949. This was largely due to declines recorded in the first three months of 2009.
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