Disaster Challenges in Tourism Industry and Local Communities in the Annapurna Conservation Area

Abstract

Tourism is providing various opportunities to the stakeholders from local residents to national government in the country. Tourism sector has contributed 10.4 % of global GDP and 9.9 % of total employment in 2017 while 4.3 % GDP and 3.5 % of total employment of Nepal depended on tourism in 2014. Annapurna Circuit comprises most popular trekking route in the world with 22 feasible trekking sub-routes. The tourist flow has steadily increased from beginning to the recent time except for a few years in the insurgency period. The arrival of tourists in the Annapurna region has significantly decreased due to Snow Storm in 2014and Earthquake in 2015. These natural disasters have also severely damaged the infrastructures of tourism industry. As a result, tourism sector has been unable to continue job and create regular income regularly to the local people of ACA as well as high Mountain areas of Nepal in a consecutive years. It is necessary to cope with the problem by following resilience strategy to recover tourism in the future.