Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

State of Tourism Development in Nepal with Special Focus on Changing Purpose of Visit

2019; Volume: 5; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.20431/2455-0043.0503001

2455-0043

Suman Kharel,

Global Healthcare and Medical Tourism

Tourism is a service based industry.United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) defines tourism as ''a social, cultural and economic phenomenon which entails the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal or business/ professional purposes.These people are called visitors and tourism has to do with their activities, some of which involve tourism expenditure'' (http://cf.cdn.unwto.org/sites/all/files/Glossary+of+terms.pdfaccessed on March 17, 2019).It has further specified that such travels should be outside the usual place of residence for multiple purposes, including leisure and business for the duration exceeding a consecutive year.Nepal has a short history of tourism.It has started since after the dawn of democracy in 1950s.The systematic tourism development started with successful climbing of Annapurna I on 3 June 1950 by Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal of France and especially after the climbing of Mt.Everest by Tenzing Norgay Sherpa of Nepal and Sir Edmund Hillary on 29 May 1953 (Shrestha and Shrestha, 2012).However, there is history of travelling some great people to and from Nepal in ancient time.A few of such historical visits include the visit of Manjushree to Kathmandu Valley (Bhandari 2030 BS:17), Ashok's visit to the birthplace of Lord Buddha Lumbini, Chinese traveler Huien-Tsang to Nepal in 643 A. D. (Sharma, 2033) and Captain Kirk Patrick's visit of 1792.In the early phase of tourism development, it had highlighted the sacredness of the Himalayas, and beautiful mountains and the cultural heritage of the country.The early literature on tourism focused to mountain ranges and mountain peaks were the center of attractions for which the great saint, monk and the nobilities from both north and south visited Nepal.With the expansion of colonialism, western traveler visited Nepal and introduced the country to the western world (Bhandari, 2030 BS).However, tourism was considered a means of livelihood and its importance in the national economy during the 1980s and later.Furthermore, it was linked to environment and development of the country (Baskota and Sharma, 1995; Stevens, 1993a;Stevens, 1997;Subedi and Chapagain, 2011; Poudel, 1998;Ives, 2006;Chapagain, 2017).Tourism is certainly one of the major sectors of employment and income generation in the country and has its comparative advantages that can be divided into three groups: sceneries and natural beauty, trekking and adventure, and pilgrimage, art and sculptures which are unique in Nepal (Sharma and Pyakurel, 2012).