Hotel Occupancy Rises

September 16: The hotel occupancy rate that had decreased to 30 percent due to the last earthquake has reached to 65 percent. “Improvement in the tourism sector is the reason behind the increased hotel occupancy,” said B.K. Shrestha, President of Hotel Association Nepal (HAN).

According to him, the time to time arrival of foreign diplomats, INGOs and social campaigners after the earthquake helped to boost the hotel occupancy in the recent time. During tourist season of the last March/April, there was 55 percent hotel occupancy rate, informed Shrestha at a press conference organized by HAN to inform about the upcoming golden jubilee celebration.

HAN is celebrating its golden jubilee by conducting various programs in Soaltee Crown Plaza from September 30 to October 2. As per Shrestha, 4,000 hotel rooms will be added by 2019. Currently, there are 12,000 hotel rooms including five star and tourist level hotels. “Total of 16,000 rooms will have capacity to hold two million tourists by 2020,” informs Binayak Shah, General Secretary of HAN.

In the tourism vision 2020, the government has targeted of welcoming two million visitors by 2020. Shah viewed that the extensive tourism promotion is necessary to welcome such amount of tourists in the country. “It is impossible to meet the target without the help of Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) and Nepal Airlines. If Nepal Airlines Corporation strengthen its capacity by adding more aircrafts then it is not difficult to meet the target,” he added.