Million dreams

Tourist arrivals in Nepal

As the memories of the devastating 2015 earthquakes and the subsequent five months of border blockade fade, tourism in Nepal is booming again. According to the Department of Immigration, in the first half of 2017, tourist arrivals jumped by a more-than-healthy 41.5 percent compared to the same period in 2016. With around 500,000 foreign tourists having already visited the country in these six months, and the peak season starting only in September, there is now a real possibility that tourist arrivals in 2017 could cross the one million mark. One reason for this uptick is Nepal’s promotion by credible international travel and tourism guides like Lonely Planet and National Geographic. Nepal government’s efforts to promote the country online also seem to be paying off. The tourism ministry officials are so bullish that they now believe that their target of attracting 2.52 million tourists a year by 2025 is now within reach. That is a lot of tourists. A lot may yet happen between now and 2025, but if the goal is to attract that many tourists, there will have to be sea-change in our infrastructures that support tourism.

Chief among those infrastructures are our airports. Currently, the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in Kathmandu is our sole connection with the outside world. But this single-runway airport is already overcrowded. There is no space to add a second runway. This is why other alternatives to TIA had to be explored, and discussions started on building other international airports in Bhairahawa and Pokhara. But progress on both has been woeful. The completion date of the Gautam Buddha international airport in Bhairahawa has been repeatedly put off. As things stand, only 30 percent work has been completed, with only nine months to go to the new deadline. In the case of Pokhara regional international airport, construction started early this month, 15 months after its foundation stone was laid. Both these are ‘national pride projects’ that have been deemed crucial for Nepal’s development and economic growth. Successive governments have failed to instill a sense of urgency, as these projects became a victim of competing interests of political parties, each of which wanted to appoint its own sub-contractors and suppliers. The chief contractors in these two projects, both Chinese, were as a result left off the hook.

But it is not just our airports that need upgrading. The condition of our roads is also abysmal. The 36 kilometers of the Narayangadh-Muglin road, a vital artery into Kathmandu and Pokhara, has been rendered impassable, on and off, due to frequent landslides. The potholed highway out of Kathmandu near Thankot is another big put-off for tourists, as is the dust and grime of Kathmandu. We should consider ourselves fortunate that so many tourists continue to come to Nepal despite the country’s visible failure to make their stay comfortable. We should not forget that the greater the number of tourists who come to Nepal, the greater the possibility of Nepal’s bad publicity abroad. With so many top-notch tourist destinations to compete against, Nepal can ill afford complacency.