‘The Government of Nepal’s Tourism Vision 2020 seeks to achieve 2 million tourist visitors a year and, by adding one million jobs to the sector, making the tourism industry the nation’s number one employment generator by 2020.’
-Tourism Sector Profile
The year 2020 was chosen as the national tourism year for Nepal, namely, Visit Nepal 2020, third of its kind after Visit Nepal 1998 and Visit Nepal 2011; but due to the rise of pandemic COVID-19 in the early phases of the year, it might not be able to reach the initial target set by the legislature to accommodate more than one million visitors this year.
With Nepal Government suspending the issue of tourist visas in early March, except for the diplomatic, international organization, and some international non-governmental organization personnel, the tourism industry of Nepal did not succeed to achieve its initial aim of Visit Nepal 2020. As of October 17, trekkers and mountaineers are allowed into the country under certain precautionary conditions after a gap of nearly seven months. Along with that, the government is also working towards re-opening the entire tourism sector by making provisions for health protocols.
The Tourism Revenue of Nepal as of December 2019 was 724 USD million, which showed a hike of 2.98% as compared to the revenue as of December 2018, which was 703 USD million. (As per the reports of CEIC Data) As the data had reached an all-time high of 724 USD million, even better performance in the tourism sector was anticipated for the year 2020.
As per the data of 2019, the contribution of Nepal’s Tourism Revenue towards the GDP of Nepal was 7.9%. Although the contribution of travel and tourism to GDP tended to decrease through the 2000–2019 period, the vision for the tourism year 2020 looked forward to the growth of these numbers.
National Tourism Strategy Action Plan 2015-2024 accounts for the much-needed direction and guidance for the implementation of the proposed strategy, which was to be implemented in two phases: Phase 1 (2015–19) and Phase 2 (2020–25). The plans for phase 2 were to emphasize sector consolidation and expansion by strengthening the diversified and improved product range and targeting new high-yield markets.
The World Bank’s GDP growth rate projection for Nepal has lowered to 1.5-2.8% whereas the pre-COVID projection accounted for a rate of 6.4%. As per the forecast of the World Bank, Nepal’s Tourism Sector is supposed to be the worst hit economic sector due to the various travel restrictions that have been imposed globally as well as nationally. The pandemic has provided the tourism sector with an unpredictable knock which has resulted in its allied sector such as ‘Hotel Association Nepal’ showing a 90% decline in the country’s hotel business income in the year 2020.
The most alarming data of these all would be the World Bank’s GDP forecast of 1.4-2.9% and 2.7-3.6% for the fiscal years 2020-21 and 2021-22 respectively which indicates that it is unlikely for Nepal to bounce back even in the next two years resulting in the setback in an economic bayou.
While the rapid rise of COVID cases shows the inadequate measures taken by the government for providing the citizens with proper health infrastructures, it is also inclining more towards the challenge of forestalling the economic descent caused by the pandemic COVID-19.