Nepal's tourist arrivals up 32 per cent

Business News

Oct 4, 2007, 7:30 GMT

Kathmandu - Nepal's tourism industry showed healthy growth in the first nine months of the year with arrivals up 32 per cent, tourism officials said Thursday. The Nepal tourism board said 252,407 tourists arrived by air in Kathmandu, Nepal's only international airport, 61,611 more than in the same period of 2006. The figures were pushed up by continuing strong arrivals from the United States and Europe in September, continuing a trend seen since the beginning of the year. 'The American and European markets registered a robust growth of 33.1 per cent and 38.5 per cent, respectively,' the board said as it seeks to attract at least a half-million tourists to the Himalayan country in 2007. According to the board's statistics, 32,000 visitors arrived in Nepal via air in September alone, an increase of 26.9 per cent. It was the ninth consecutive month Nepal has recorded an increase in its number of tourist arrivals, promoting optimism of a revival of the industry that was hard-hit by Nepal's decadelong Maoist insurgency. 'Arrivals from every country during the last nine months have shown an increase,' the board said. 'Moreover, Chinese and Korean markets were up by 158.8 per cent and 98.4 per cent, respectively, after the operation of direct flights from these destinations.' The board said the preliminary data on arrivals only accounted for those entering the country via air and did not include those arriving overland from India and Tibet. Thee tourism industry is one of Nepal's biggest foreign exchange earners, bringing in millions of dollars to the impoverished country and providing employment to hundreds of thousands of people. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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echengOct 13th, 2007 - 19:56:57

Hi,

If there was a medical equipment donation program in existance, do you think vacationers would be willing to lighten their load in order to bring in medical equipment to one fo the world's most impoverished countries?

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