December 31: More than one million foreign tourists arrived in Nepal via the air route in the year 2023. According to the statistics of Nepal Tourism Board, a total of 1,008,614 tourists came to Nepal as of December 30 this year.    
This has fulfilled the government's goal of bringing in one million foreign tourists in 2023. While announcing the budget of the current fiscal year, the government had mentioned that the number of foreign tourists visiting Nepal would be increased to one million in 2023.    
The tourism industry of Nepal, which was badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, has almost revived to its original state. The NTB says that tourism industry has recovered this year by almost 85 percent compared to 2019, when around 1.2 million foreign tourists had visited the country.

"The arrival of tourists this year is encouraging," said NTB Director Maniraj Lamichhane. More than 1 million tourists have entered Nepal through the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu.    
Likewise, president of the Hotel Association of Nepal (HAN), Binayak Shah, expects the arrival of tourists to further increase in the coming days. The number of tourists will further increase if the government expands its partnership with the private sector, says Shah.    
It may be noted that the government has announced 2025 as the Visit Nepal Year. Furthermore, the year 2023 to 2032 is being celebrated as the tourism decade with a target of bringing in 3.5 million tourists.    
Meanwhile, the number of Indian tourists has increased significantly this year. In 2019, 254,150 Indian tourists visited Nepal while the number rose to 317,481 this year. Likewise, the number of American tourists reached 99,985 this year. In 2019, a total of 93,241 American tourists had visited visit Nepal.    
Likewise, the number of Chinese tourists is gradually increasing with the arrival of 60,160 Chinese nationals this year. In 2019, altogether 169,543 Chinese tourists had visited Nepal. -- RSS