Pokhara hotels bear brunt of KTM airport closure

POKHARA, March 14: Pokhara hotels are not getting good business even in the peak season as number of tourists has gone down mainly due to closure of the country’s only international airport for four days.

Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in Kathmandu remained closed from March 4 to 7 after an Airbus 330 aircraft blocked the airport’s only runway when it skidded off while trying to land.

Tourism entrepreneurs consider ‘September to November’ as first season and ‘February to April’ as second season as number of tourists hit peak in these months. Tourist arrivals, however, were down in both the seasons this year. Flow of tourists was affected in the first season due to blizzards in the Annapurna Region in October. Similarly, tourist arrivals fell in the second season due to closure of TIA.

“We had to suffer huge loss this year as blizzards in the Annapurna Region in October and closure of international airport a few days ago resulted to drop in the number of foreign tourists visiting Pokhara,” Bharat Sharma, proprietor of Atithi Resort, said. “Many tourists cancelled booking due to closure of the airport. Local hotels had to face loss worth millions of hundreds and thousands of rupees.”

Ashwini Acharya, general manager of The Yatra, which started operation only recently, said they had to suffer as the number of tourists fell by around 50 percent due to closure of the airport. “We opened the hotel from first week of March. We had received good booking from Chinese tourists and our occupancy hovered above 60 percent. But occupancy fell down following closure of the airport,” Acharya said, adding that there is no sign of recovery yet.

Occupancy of Pokhara hotels, which used to hover above 80 percent at this time of year, has dropped to 40 percent. There are around 400 hotels in Pokhara.

“Most of the European visitors come to Nepal via Turkish Airlines. As the aircraft of Turkish airlines met with an accident, many Europeans cancelled their visit. I had a booking for a big group of European tourists coming via Turkish Airlines. But as they could not come, occupancy for the whole week was affected,” Gupta Giri, front office manager of Shangri-la Village Resort, said.

The resort, which used to have occupancy of around 85 percent at this time of year, has occupancy of around 60 percent at present.

“Hoteliers are suffering as both the seasons were affected this year. Tourism industry has suffered this year to blizzards, airport closure and rumor of swine flu in the peak season,” Bharat Raj Parajuli, president of Pachimanchal Hotel Association, Pokhara, said.