Visitor arrivals via air have increased by 14.3 percent to 59,415 in the month of April 2012 compared to the same month last year.

According to the figure released by the Immigration Office at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), the arrivals from South Asian region have shown positive growth of 35.4 percent with mixed performance.

The arrivals from India and Pakistan were up by 44.5 percent and 14.8 percent respectively while arrivals from Bangladesh and Sri-Lanka declined by 12.9 percent and 41.2 percent respectively.

However, a sustained growth of 36.8 percent has been observed in the arrivals from the South Asian region during the first 4 months of 2012, in comparison to the same period last year.

Asia (other than South Asian region) saw overall rise of 16.7 percent in April 2012.  Except for Thailand (-14.7 percent) almost all the markets have shown positive trend with China (42.9 percent), Malaysia (16.8 percent), Singapore (5.7 percent) and Japan (13.1 percent) compared to the same month last year.  Between Jan-Apr 2012, the arrivals from Asia rose by 21.1 percent compared to the same period last year.

As far as long haul markets are concerned, Europe registered overall positive growth of 3.2 percent compared to the same month last year with total visitor arrivals of 19,286.  Arrivals from Denmark, Germany, Italy, Russia and Sweden were up by 4.9 percent, 5.5 percent, 115.8 percent, 83.1 percent and 4.7 percent respectively. The Netherlands, France, U.K were some of the major markets to register negative growths in April 2012.

The figures show increasing trend in the visitor arrivals from Australia (4.7 percent) whereas the arrivals from New Zealand dropped by 9.5 percent. However, the United States of America and Canada, both the markets have registered positive growth of 9.8 percent and 39.1 percent respectively.

Overall in January – April period, India grew at an average of 43.9 percent, China (38.3 percent), Germany (40.3 percent), France (8.4 percent), UK (4.0 percent) and USA (10.7 percent).

The visitor arrivals totaled 207,961 between January and April, up by 23.1 percent, compared to the same period last year. Nepal received a total of 39,003 more tourists in January – April period in 2012 in comparison to the same period last year.

A total of 67,810 foreign tourists departed from TIA in April 2012.The number of Nepalese arrivals stood at 58,483 while 72,726 Nepalese departed from TIA in April 2012. Nepalnews.com