Kathmandu, Sept 17: Nepal's tourism industry, only just limping back to recovery, is watching nervously as visitors cancel their trips after Maoist rebels ended a seven-month truce and took their insurgency to the capital Kathmandu. Tourist arrivals had increased 23 per cent from January through August compared with the same period in 2002, as visitors again felt safe in the kingdom where more than 7,900 people have died in Maoist violence since 1996.
But the Maoists ended the ceasefire August 27 after peace talks collapsed and have since been blamed for a string of blasts in Kathmandu -- most not deadly, but enough for the government to impose a night curfew and ban public gatherings.
Prabin Bahadur Pandey, head of the Pacific and Asia Tour Association, said 30 per cent of the tourists who had booked trips through his agency cancelled after hearing about the bombings in the capital.
"The tourism sector will suffer gravely in Nepal unless the Nepal tourism board sets afoot a well-planned programme to convince incoming tourists," Pandey said.
He cited the examples of Sri Lanka and Indonesia, which have launched campaigns to bring in tourists despite the Tamil separatist conflict and the 2002 Bali nightclub attack respectively.
Tourism is the top hard-currency earner in the cash-strapped land of Mount Everest, other than remittances from Nepalese working abroad. The tourist trade employs 250,000 people directly with another one million dependent on it.
Bureau Report