It is early in the afternoon and Thamel’s shopkeepers are vying with one another to grab the attention of the few tourists who are still wandering in its streets.

The effects of the outbreak of Covid-19 late last year in China and its spread across the world are now being felt in Kathmandu’s tourist hub, as tourist numbers dwindle amidst a much-vaunted tourism campaign and just ahead of the Spring tourist season.

Sunaina, a salesperson at the Timberland outlet in Thamel who didn’t want to reveal her full name due to fears of reprisal, said that the store has only been making two sales per day since the beginning of February.

“Footfalls have dropped by more than 60 per cent,” she said. “At this rate, sustaining the business is going to be very difficult.”

Farrukh Ahmed, who runs the handicraft store Himalayan Arts, echoed Sunaina, saying that his sales had dropped almost 90 per cent over the past month.

“Life seems to be playing a cruel joke on us,” said Ahmed. “For most of us in Thamel, the shops are on lease and we have to shell out heavy amounts every month in rent. There are also other fixed costs like staff salaries and utilities and there is no respite from that, whether we have the sales or not.”

Tourist arrivals by air to Nepal dropped 21 per cent year-on-year in February to 77,064 individuals, according to the Department of Immigration.

Tourists from countries that have been hit hardest by the coronavirus outbreak – China, Spain, Italy, Japan, Iran and South Korea – are no longer eligible for on-arrival visas starting March 10 as the federal government wants to ensure the disease doesn’t spread here. As the winter ends and the Spring tourist season begins, this does not bode well for Thamel’s businesses, which depend heavily on the foreign visitors.

“Most visitors have cancelled their bookings and there are fewer and fewer new bookings,” Debendra Pokharel, operator of the Hotel Nepal Bhoomi in Thamel, told the Post. “It’s obvious that people are scared to travel. At the moment, our hotel has only three occupied rooms out of 20, so you can imagine our situation.”

Occupancy has fallen sharply across the country, with most hotels reporting a fall of over 50 per cent in January and February. Even high-end hotels, like Durbarmarg’s Hotel Annapurna, have reported an occupancy of just 40-45 per cent, down from 70 per cent before the Covid-19 outbreak in China.

This has largely to do with the fact that Chinese tourists are not travelling as much anymore, especially since the Chinese government issued a notice asking travel and tour companies to suspend outbound travel for the time being. Chinese tourists constitute the second-largest group of visitors to Nepal, with 169,543 arrivals in 2019. The government’s Visit Nepal 2020 campaign had aimed to bring in 350,000 Chinese tourists this year, but that number is now unlikely to be met.

With tourist numbers falling, many of Thamel’s support businesses, like money changers, are reporting drastic falls in income.

Prakash Bhattachan, a cashier at Fuji Money Changer, said that their business had dropped by nearly 70 per cent.

“We are now changing foreign currency worth only about Rs400,000 ($3,380) daily, down from around Rs1.5 million the same time last year,” said Bhattachan. “It looks like the tourist season will be over by the time the coronavirus scare subsides.”

THE KATHMANDU POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK