Trend Analysis of Tourists Arrival in Nepal 1990-2012

Abstract

This study is mainly concentrated on the objectives to assess the trend of tourist arrival in Nepal from 1990 to 2012. This study is also analyzed the contribution of tourism to the GDP, share of tourism receipts to the national economy and this study has also attempted to analyze the employment generation from tourism and some appropriate recommendations for tourism development in Nepal has been presented. In this study data has been analyzed depending on secondary sources of information from concerned authorities. This study specially concerns with international tourist arrivals in Nepal. And all the information is based on secondary data. This study covers the 23 years i.e. from 1990 to 2012. The collected data has been analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. To analyze the data different tools and techniques have been used. The simple mathematical tools like percentage, ratio and average have been used to analyze the data. And the data has been presented by using simple methods such as tables, bar diagrams, pie-charts and charts. Tourism is the movement or travel of people from one place to another; whether it is within their own country or to other countries, for pleasure, business, pilgrimage and other purpose. The evolution of tourism dates back to ancient times. In Nepal, tourism, despite having a long history was, developed since 1950s only. It is found that the tourist arrival in Nepal in 1962 was 6179 and after a decade in 1972 it reached 52,930, which was an increase by 8.6 times. In the year 2012, the number of tourists reached 803,092 by recording a growth of 9.1 percent over 2011 which was the highest figure of tourist arrival in Nepal until the year 2012. The gender wise trend of tourist arrivals in Nepal shows that the number of male tourists is always larger than that of female tourists. In the year 2012 the ratio of male and female tourists' arrivals in Nepal were 54.7 and 45.3 respectively of the total arrivals. In Nepal shortest length of stay of tourists is recorded 7.92 days in 2002 and the longest 13.51 days in the year 2004 during the period 1990 and 2012. The average length of stay of foreign tourists in Nepal has been found 12.26 days during the year 2012. The age-wise trend of tourist arrival in Nepal found that since the year 1992 to 2012 the age group of 31-45 has a higher share and age group of 16-30, 46-60, 61 & over and 0 -15 secured second, third, fourth and fifth position except the year 2004 and 2009. March, April of Spring season and October, November of Autumn season, these four months are peak seasons for tourist coming to Nepal. Most of the tourists visiting Nepal come for holiday/pleasure purpose. In 2012 most of the tourist came for holiday and pleasure purposes which is 47.3 percent of the total tourist arrival in Nepal in that year. In the early years above 80 percent tourists uses air service while visiting Nepal and below 20 percent tourists they came by land transport service. Since 2002, except the year 2003, below 80 percent tourists came by air and above 20 percent came via land. In terms of nationality, the largest number of tourists coming to Nepal is from India and other major nationalities include China, UK, USA, Sri Lanka, Japan, Germany, France, etc. The highest percent of tourist arrivals in Nepal in 2012 was from India with 20.6 percent share and other major market for Nepal among top ten nations are China (8.9%), Sri Lanka (8.7%), USA (6.1%), UK (5.1%), France (3.6%), Japan (3.6%), Germany (3.8%), Australia (2.7%), Netherland (1.9%), and Italy and Spain (1.8%) respectively. In the fiscal year 2000/01 the total foreign exchange earnings from tourism was Rs.11717 million. It reached Rs. 30703 million in the fiscal year 2011/12 which is about three times more than the fiscal year 2000/01. The proportion of tourism earnings to total foreign exchange earnings has been fluctuating from 2000/01 to 2011/12 ranging 3.6 percent to 8.1 percent. The higher percentage of share from tourism is noticed in the year 1993/94 which was recorded 4.3 percent of total GDP. And the lowest percentage of share from tourism to GDP in the year 2006/07 that was recorded only 1.5 percent. So tourism is one of the major contributors of the foreign exchange earnings in the country. There were 637 travel agencies and 537 trekking agencies working in Nepal in the year 2000 which number of agencies reached 1739 and 1240 in the year 2010. The number of tourist guide and trekking guide has increased also in increasing rate. The number of tourist guide was 1854 and the number of trekking guide was 2155 in the year 2000. These numbers are reached 2661 and 6747 respectively in the year 2010. The number of trekking guide has been increased more than 3 times during the study period i.e. from 2000 to 2010. So the recent trend of tourists' arrival in Nepal seems satisfactory. To promote tourism sector and its contribution to socio-economic sector of the country, we need to utilize available resources properly and beneficially.