Nepal Tourism launches new National Tourism Strategy

Tourism Ministry of Nepal has launched the new National Tourism Strategy 2016-2025 which envisages a fivefold increase in arrivals to 2.52 million annually by the year 2025.

The new scheme has recommended a budget of Rs 6.44 billion to implement the action plan. One-fourth of the funding is expected to be spent in the first and second years and one-fourth during each of the remaining three years. “The strategy was implemented officially after being endorsed by the Cabinet’s Economic and Infrastructure Committee recently,” said Ghanshyam Upadhyay, spokesperson for the Ministry.

The strategy has set 11 special strategies for the overall development of the tourism sector—branding target, marketing target, focused programmes and development target, tourism economy, improvement of business investment target, human resource development, infrastructure development target, improvement of tourism quality, reforms in institutional and management, conservation of cultural heritage and zero carbon target. The strategy, which was developed with the technical assistance of Samarth-NMDP, has set a target to boost the average tourist length of stay to 15 days from the current 13 days and spending to $90 per tourist from $68.57 in 2015.

Likewise, the strategy has envisaged increasing foreign exchange earnings from the tourism sector to Rs 340 billion annually from Rs 49.78 billion in 2015. The tourism sector’s contribution to the country’s GDP has been projected to jump 9.29% from the existing 2.44% in 2015.

Similarly, the strategy has projected an increase in jobs in the tourism industry to 898,000 from 633,000 in 2015. Employment in the tourism industry and future projections are based on the report published by the World Travel and Tourism Council.