Short and medium-term prospects for tourism in Nepal post COVID-19

The long term prospects for tourism in Nepal is anybody's guess. No one dares to look into that abyss right now. The fog of COVID-19 is just too thick to enable anyone to see that far out.

That is not to say that tourism as a viable product is dead in the water. It certainly is not. Too many people have been bitten by the travel bug to stop traveling altogether especially once the various governments deem it fit to go a-wandering. But, will tourism revert to resembling anything close to pre-COVID-19 days? 

Globally, in the short term, once travel restrictions are lifted tourism will re-start as a trickle. This will not be a sudden synchronized event, coordinated between governments, orchestrated by some wizard but, a slow painful process - city by city, county by county, province by province, state by state, and country by country. 

Airlines will begin to take to the skies - after pilots and grounded planes after been re-certified, hotels will re-open their doors - hesitantly at first, after all, who is to say the first guest through the doors is not bringing some strange illness into the premises. Tour operators will dust off their fleets - after batteries are re-charged and tires are checked. Restaurants will throw open their doors - once their supply chains have been restored. But, will the tourists come back? Like they used to? No.

In Nepal, initially, it will be the ranks of the stranded, those that were not rescued by their governments or those that fell through the cracks, that will be rushing to catch flights to get back home to jobs that may or may no longer exist. Then, it will probably be the domestic travelers, taking those first, tentative steps out of their homes, past their own neighborhoods, and onto places like Manakamana, Pokhara, Chitwan, and Lumbini. This will probably be bolstered to some extent by nationalistic zeal on the part of the service providers who will be encouraging people to 'see Nepal first', the Government who will be trying to cash in on any return to normalcy to hide its shortcomings during the crisis, and by the travelers themselves who will want to vacation closer to home to save money and avoid the barriers and uncertainties awaiting them on foreign shores. 

While this is going on, the repeat visitors, those that love to travel to Nepal every year will start packing their bags. They have a compulsion and this will be egged on by the feeling that traveling to Nepal will somehow help the Nepali economy and they will want to do their bit. And they will be correct! The adventure tourists - the mountaineers, trekkers, and rafters will be making plans. Mountaineers usually have a wish list and are constrained by time to "knock-off" items on the list between trips home to make a living and rushing back to the mountains to make that climb, while time and agility are still on their side. They will return next. Trekkers and rafters are also similarly constrained although to a lesser degree but, the more arduous trips must be completed before you are too old for it and while you can finance it. Moreover, these are adventurous people and not averse to a little bit of risk. One might recall that the last people rushing home during the pandemic and subsequent lockdown were the trekkers. In fact, some were insisting on finishing their treks before going home. These will be followed closely or even pre-empted by the short-haul, short-stay travelers from India, for whom Nepal is a known getaway and easily accessible. So, if the pandemic is contained or controlled by year's end and flights resume, we can start expecting travelers to start coming in by early 2021. The trekkers will trickle in for the spring and arrivals should firm up a bit in the fall of  2021. The numbers however, will remain low. 

The numbers will remain low for at least three reasons. Firstly, the economic downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic will keep the demand for travel depressed in the short term. Secondly, people will continue the practice of social distancing for some time. Yes, that same thing that got people through the pandemic will prove a hurdle to tourism. Air travel as it is conducted requires people to gather in cramped spaces (the check-in queue, the customs, immigration, and quarantine lines, departure lounges, and aircraft cabins) Lastly, and importantly, the reduced demand will be followed by a lagging air seat capacity. Airlines, hurting from the pandemic will be loath to add capacity until they see a strong demand re-emerging on their routes. So, no air capacity will feed higher ticket prices and lower tourist numbers in the short term. A case to have a strong national carrier could be made right here but, that is for another day!

In the medium term, once airlines feel that sufficient demand exists for them to start re-establishing connections to far-flung leisure destinations (yes, that is what we are)  we will begin to see the re-emergence of a semblance of the tourism industry we used to know. The SARS-CoV-02 virus will have been defeated,  a vaccine will be widely available in the market, economies will be on the rebound in 18 months to 3 years, with a possible strong enough growth that the ravages of the pandemic will have been mostly forgotten. Governments will have lifted restrictions to travel to most places and people will be going. But, they will mostly be going closer to home in smaller numbers. In Nepal, we can then expect strong growth in arrivals from China and sustained growth from India. The adventure travel segment will continue its bull run and medium-haul and to some extent, long-haul markets will begin to recover.

What sort of traveler demographics will emerge in the medium term, will depend a lot on how deeply and how long COVID-19 continues to impact the global psyche and global economy but, a few assumptions can be made. Travelers may avoid crowded places like big airports, large airplanes, and crowded tourist spots. Consequently, travel volumes may move through smaller airports, on more point-to-point flights without transits, and in passenger cabin layouts which are not yet on the drawing boards to uncrowded places seeking experiences in place of instant gratification.

This will throw up unique sets of challenges and opportunities. Large hotels (of which, thankfully, there really aren't any in Nepal) will be scrambling to find hotel guests. Airlines may have to throw out that middle seat in economy class to comply with quarantine regulations or customer perceptions thus driving up airfares, paperwork at arrival ports will increase and arrival forms and health declarations will become ubiquitous once again. Deep cleaning will acquire a new meaning for hotel housekeepers, people will be looking to see the sights in smaller, more intimate groups thus making fleets of large tour buses redundant or ready to be re-purposed, restaurants will be required to cut their cover count and will need to either be able to increase seat turnover or raise prices to cover costs.

There will be a whole new ball game in town to which we really do not know the rules.

Authors note: I began writing this blog on the 5th of April, hoping to have it published by the 8th or so. But the fluidity of the situation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic meant I had to revise some area every time I sat down to write. So, today, I have decided that this is as complete as it is going to be for today and it needs to go out the door. Things will change by tomorrow morning I know but, those changes will simply have to find space in the next article.