Three years after Nepal began focussed tourism marketing, 2001 was as bad as it could be in terms of arrivals. Last week, the Nepal Tourism Board announced the preliminary numbers for 2001 and said arrivals by air were down by about 20 percent, compared to 2000 numbers-and the arrivals that year were already low compared with 1999. Indian arrivals dropped by a whopping 33 percent and those from third countries by almost 17 percent. Pradeep Raj Pandey, Chief Executive Officer of NTB says all this has happened despite increased efforts to market Nepal in both India and overseas. The effort had begun to pay off early in the year when arrivals had begun picking up. The numbers began tumbling after the 1 June royal massacre, and were pushed further down after the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States. The emergency has also taken its toll on tourism: the year-end total arrivals were 43 percent-a full ten percentage points-lower than the declining figures in the first ten months of the year.

Government last week announced some measures to bail out the industry, especially hotels, whose overdue electricity bills are to be rescheduled, and there is also talk of helping banks reschedule bank loans. The government will even waive visa fees for overnight visitors, though industry sources say that won't make much of a difference. The industry, in an attempt to reduce overall package costs to Nepal had asked the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation waive visa fees for three-day visitors. However, when immigration statistics were extrapolated to assess how much that could cost in lost revenue, it turned out that the fees for about 100,000 tourists would be lost, hence the one-day-free gimmick. Still NTB officials are hoping they will get transit passengers here-and then be able to lure them for a longer return visit. The NTB also says it will also step up its marketing efforts in the 12 countries that provide 75 percent of Nepal's tourists. The primary markets are India, USA, Japan, United Kingdom and Germany. France, Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Australia are the major secondary markets.