Kathmandu, July 20 (RSS): In the first six months of the year 2018, Nepal welcomed over 520,000 tourists from various parts of the globe.
The statistics of the Department of Immigration shows that the inflow was over by 13 percent compared to the corresponding period last year. In the same period in 2017, a total of 460,304 foreign tourists had visited Nepal.
The data shows that tourist arrivals were encouraging even in rainy season which is considered as ‘off season’ in view of tourism business. It may be noted that the Nepal Tourism Board had launched various sorts of tourism promotional programmes aimed at bringing tourists to home.
Board chief executive officer Deepak Raj Joshi said an increase in the number of foreigners even during off season is obviously the good news for us.
Contributions of private sector could not be ignored to the increase in the influx of tourists.
Indian tourists make up the wider percentage in the figure of total arrivals. The latest data shows that 96,372 Indian tourists visited Nepal in the period while the number of Chinese was 71,379. The number of tourists from the United States of America was 43,816 and the figure of Japanese tourists was counted at 13, 851.
Nepal welcomed tourists from the South Asian countries, from European countries– Austria , Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden– and other countries in the period. —-