There’s no question the new arrival hall at Kathmandu’s airport is a thing of beauty. With brightly gleaming floors, modern lifts, escalators, and sophisticated HVAC systems, this was built to create an arrival experience in Nepal worthy of the slogan “Visit Nepal 2020”
Visit Nepal 2020 was designed to be one of the biggest promotions of tourism ever for Nepal, with huge amounts of money spent on promotion the goal was to break the 2 million visitor barrier and usher in a wave of tourism for the country. But then came the Beast, the beast named Covid-19 at first, followed by many variants of the original. Experts in Nepal’s tourism industry declared 2020 a “write-off” and pinned their hopes on 2021.
But, 2021 was not to be either. The rise in the “Delta” variant of the virus created lockdowns and requirements for testing and quarantines that had a chilling, if not outright freezing impact on tourism.
Few were willing to spend the first two weeks of their visit in quarantine and face the prospect of an additional PCR test during quarantine. Like school children playing on a slide, tourism went sliding down and never came back up.
Toward the end of 2021, a bright spot appeared, hope against all hope October 2021 saw the highest post-covid arrivals since the start of the year, at last, it seemed things were looking up.
And now, Omicron, the latest variant has dashed hope again. During the three-plus hours, I personally spent in the beautiful, new arrival area I saw a mere handful of tourists and a large number of Nepali’s returning from overseas work from countries that are again shutting down due to the spread of Omicron, and in so doing dashing hopes for work. In an economy so dependent on remittance inflows (almost 1/3 of the GDP) that isn’t a good sign. While all over Nepal new hotels are being built and older hotels renovated the hopes all now lie with 2022, which so far seems like more of the same, time will tell.
(eTN): Beauty Versus the New Beast: Kathmandu Tribhuvan International Airport | re-post license | post content
