New tourism policy focuses on diversifying products, building safe infrastructure

KATHMANDU: The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation on Monday unveiled the Tourism Policy, 2025, aiming to promote sustainable tourism development, improve service quality, and generate employment opportunities in Nepal.

Unveiling the policy, Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, Badri Prasad Pandey, said the new Tourism Policy focuses on identifying and diversifying Nepal’s unique tourism assets, enhancing infrastructure, promoting eco-friendly tourism and improving governance.

The policy outlines five key objectives. It seeks to identify, develop, promote and diversify tourism products, particularly those that reflect Nepal’s unique natural and cultural heritage. Likewise, it emphasises the development of quality and safe tourism infrastructure and services, including improvements in roads, hotels, and aviation. The policy promotes sustainable and resilient tourism through eco-friendly and responsible practices. Similarly, it aims to improve governance in the tourism sector by updating laws, enhancing institutional coordination, and strengthening capacity. Another central objective of the policy is to generate employment and support inclusive economic growth by expanding tourism-related jobs and self-employment opportunities.

Likewise, the policy focuses on promoting public-private partnerships in infrastructure development, enhancing air connectivity to key source markets, encouraging eco-tourism, and updating legal and institutional frameworks.

The ministry is optimistic that this policy will provide a new direction for Nepal’s tourism sector and contribute significantly to the national economy.

Launching the new Tourism Policy amid a ceremony on Monday, Minister Pandey said the policy has been formulated to encourage the private sector in tourism promotion. “The ministry will collaborate with the private sector, foreign diplomatic missions in Nepal and non-resident Nepali organizations for tourism promotion,” he said.

The policy also states that a Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) will be prepared within a year to collect and analyze overall tourism-related data.

TSA is a standardized framework for measuring the economic impact of tourism by analyzing tourism-related expenditures, supply and employment. It provides a detailed view of tourism’s contribution to a national or regional economy.