Potential of Chinese Tourism in Nepal

vThe government of Nepal decided to waive off visa fee for Chinese nationals with the objective of attracting more tourists in December 25, 2015. Nepal Tourism Board has spoken out the policy of bringing increasing number of tourists through organizing business to business (B2B) meetings and consumer focused promotional programs. Moreover, Nepal can sell three competitive advantaged “S” i.e.  Sun, Smile and Siddharth Gautam. Nepal has witnessed increasing number of hotels and restaurants as well as other businesses run by Chinese owners in Kathmandu and Pokhara.

China has been the world’s largest outbound tourism market since 2012. According to the China Tourism Research Institute, China had 120 million outbound visitors in 2015 and they spent $104.5 billion, recording increases of 12 percent tourists and 16.7 percent spent from 2014. If Nepal managed to welcome only a fraction of Chinese outbound visitors to travel to Nepal, it will be a big contribution for Nepalese economy through tourism industry

If we look at 2003-2014, the number of Chinese tourists coming to Nepal has increased steadily (Source NTB, 2016). According to statistics of MoCTCA, the number of Chinese tourist reached 123,805 in 2014 from 7,562 in 2003. Chinese tourists comprised of 15.7 percent of total tourist arrivals of Nepal in 2014. Nepal had received 790,118 foreign tourists in 2014. Pokhara and Lumbini as most of the Chinese are fascinated with these two places in Nepal. Once the international airport in Pokhara completed, then Pokhara can receive overwhelming number of Chinese tourists.

 In 2002, the China National Tourism Administration granted Approved Destination Status (ADS) to Nepal and in June that year, Chinese citizens began visiting Nepal officially for the first time as tourists. Before 2000, Chinese were allowed to travel to Nepal only on official visits.  Out of the total Nepal bound 1,23,805 Chinese tourists in 2014, 16% visited Lumbini, the Birth Place of Gautam Buddha. In 2014, first and the second Lumbini Bound tourists were from (28% ) Srilankan and (19%) Thailand.

Nepal is in a mission of attracting two million tourists in 2020 and increasing contribution of the sector to the GDP to up to 10 per cent from about 3 percent now, and increase the average length of stay of a tourist to around 16 days from current 13 days.

During the Prime Minister KP Oli’s Visit to China in 2016, it was agreed to support each other’s tourism promotion activities in their respective countries to enhance people-to-people contacts. Further, China has expressed willingness to provide Chinese language training in Nepal to 200 Nepali tourism professionals in the next five years. Therefore, if Chine centric tourism promotion strategies are adopted and aggressive marketing is done, then it can be said that tourism industry in Nepal can engage increasing number of youths and thereby contributes to retain young and energetic people in their own country. Therefore, it is the high time for the Government of Nepal to formulate and implement policies that attract tourists from neighboring country like China.