On the occasion of World Tourism Day, this year, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has designated the theme of "Tourism and Sustainable Transformation", focusing on the sustainable development of tourism that supports local development, environment and biodiversity conservation, produce skilled human resources and finally backing the overall development of the country. UNWTO takes tourism as a catalyst with a capacity to develop society collectively, deliver education and create employment. It also stresses on the requirement of responsible stewardship for the sustainable development of tourism. It seeks the proactive role of the tourism stakeholders in reducing emissions, conserving biodiversity and investing in resilient infrastructure to safeguard our natural resources and ecosystems and ensure resource availability for future generations.
Our country is considered as the most favored adventure tourism destination with 461 mountains opened for climbing, 14 mountains above 8000m and is home to an estimated number of 2000 mountains across the country. Mountain tourism is the backbone of our tourism economy generating the income of NRS 773.59 million as per the report of Department of Tourism, but Global Climate report 2024 of World Meteorological Organization mentioned that 2024 was the warmest year in the human history with an increased temperature surpassing the 1.5 Degree Celsius threshold pre-industrial levels. ICIMOD in its HKH Snow 2024 report confirmed about the less snow accumulation on the mountains in the last 23 years. The less in formation of snow means the possibility of scarcity of water for more than 240 million people of Hindu Kush Himalayan region. The upward shifting of the snowline on mountains will have a serious effect on mountain tourism and ultimately daily livelihood of the mountain people will also be affected. Furthermore, the increase in the size and number of glacial lakes in comparison to the previous year poses another threat in the water flood. Human related activities are primarily considered as the responsible factors for the increase in the greenhouse gas levels, global warming and climate change impacting the socio-economic condition of the country like Nepal.
The Department of Immigration in its report- 2023 stated that 1.6 million left in 2023 for different purposes and among them, 808,415 people left for employment with an average of 2200 people going abroad daily to seek a job only. We are likely to be established as developed countries in a short span of time because of the rich natural resources, unique biodiversity, beautiful nature supported by the best adventure destinations in the world. Poor governance and corruption in our system lead to the obstacle in the development of our economy resulting in the lack of economic growth, employment opportunity and poverty among the general people and thus become the major reason for the increase in the migration of people from our country.
Sustainable Tourism Challenges
The growing number of hotels indicates a good signal in terms of physical infrastructure development, but a million-dollar question mark is the usage of these hotels by the tourists. In this regard, it will be sensible to look at the report of Nepal Tourism Board, which mentioned that the 1,147,567 tourists visited Nepal in 2024. It included all the people entering Nepal with international passports, which means NRNs are also included in the same number. The number of NRNs visiting Nepal is not available and keeping them in the category of tourists will not definitely give the exact number of tourists coming to Nepal. The other important factors that should come under our consideration is the number of NRNs using hotels as accommodation during their stay in Nepal or payment of different service fees determined for the foreign nationals. These things are very important for the calculation of the contribution of tourists to our national economy. A worthwhile comment was made by the Hotel Association Nepal President that just one-third of the total capacity of the hotels are being used for the accommodation whereas Nepali hotels can cater service to more than three million tourists a year.
As the number of big hotels continues to be on the rise in Kathmandu, it would be relevant to look at the report of Engineering and Environmental Geological Map of Kathmandu, a joint survey carried by the Department of Mines and Geology with German scientists in 1998. It concluded that Kathmandu is not an appropriate place for the big infrastructures and if needed, it suggested adopting measures that will help to maintain the environmental balance of the city. Likewise, the journal (2025 March) of Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute completed by researchers Sagar Rawal and Guoquan Wang from University of Houston mentioned that the annual land subsidence in different areas of Kathmandu is found to be from 5 cm to 21 cm. This report, based on analysis of the satellite data of Kathmandu from 2017 to 2024, concluded that ground subsidence in Kathmandu is mainly due to haphazard construction of big infrastructure like hotels, housing, apartments etc. followed by the over extraction of groundwater in those infrastructure.
UNWTO assumes that sustainable tourism development needs the continuous elevation of the skills of tourism human resources to cope with the growing competition in the tourism world. In this context, the growing number of users in the Artificial Industry (AI) in the tourism industry is another concern towards which we should be very attentive. In the recently concluded Wen in Travel (WiT) conference in Singapore, it was learned that 60% of Asia Pacific travelers use AI tools for their research before travel. Efficiency, access to the best deals, reliability in information, language friendly etc. are some of the features of AI due to which the tourism industry has adopted it as the dependable tool. Travel applications like TripAdvisor, Expedia, booking.com etc. have already embraced AI tools in their applications for understanding market trend, data analysis, timely and competitive decision making on price.
As per the theme of UNWTO, in order to move our tourism industry forward for a sustainable, inclusive and resilient future for all, our focus should be on the development of resilient infrastructure, which can survive and recover from climate change, leaving a positive impact on the well-being of the society. Development of infrastructure in the identified tourism destinations should be based on our requirement through the sustainable usage of natural resources with special focus in conserving the environment, biodiversity and ecosystem. The review in our mindset that takes urban-centric construction of hotels as tourism development is needed and therefore should be equitably distributed through the other rural tourism destinations. Rather than regretting our geographic location between two giant economic nations, we should center our effort on the development of nature-based tourism like ecotourism, cultural-heritage tourism, and mountain tourism since it requires less investment in order to create employment opportunities for the stoppage of the movement of young people to other countries seeking a better future. The establishment of AI as an integral part of the tourism industry necessitates the continuous execution of the training programs to upgrade the skills and knowledge of tourism human resources.
(The author is the Chief Administrative Officer at Nepal Mountaineering Association.)
