Mountain Tourism

Mountain Tourism

Tourism is the fastest growing industry in the world, increasing from 25 million international arrivals in 1950 to 842 million in 2006, a more than 30-fold increase, with international arrivals expected to double to 1.5 billion by 2020. Mountains are important assets for the tourism industry. They take up an estimated share of 15-20% of the global tourism market, generating between 100 and 140 billion US$ per year.

With the highest and most famous mountain peaks of the world, its unique and rare flora and fauna, and a great variety of unique hill and mountain cultures, the tourism potential of the Himalaya region is beyond dispute. At the same time, the region is struggling with high poverty ratios, exacerbated by climate change, environmental degradation, and an increasing rural-urban migration, making traditional livelihood options increasingly unsustainable. Tourism is identified by ICIMOD as a promising adaptation strategy, providing mountain people with alternative livelihood options, building on the strengths of the region.

Tourism is one avenue where mountain specificities that are generally considered constraints to development – remoteness, difficult access, wilderness, insular cultures, and subsistence lifestyles – can be transformed into economic opportunities. Being labour intensive, having relatively high multiplier effects, and requiring relatively low levels of capital and land investment, tourism can yield significant benefits in remote and rural areas where traditional livelihoods are under threat.

In spite of this huge potential, tourism has so far contributed little to poverty reduction in mountain areas. ICIMOD’s research has revealed some major constraints: policy failures have been noted, a lack of human resource development, a lack of supply side facilities and management, and a failure to link tourism with the local production system, resulting in high ‘leakages’ of tourism-generated income from mountain areas.

ICIMOD is addressing these challenges by facilitating and supporting the development of a pro-poor sustainable mountain tourism industry aimed at poverty reduction of mountain people, and increasing their resilience to climate change and other drivers of change. The activities focus on knowledge generation and dissemination, training and capacity building, policy development, and regional coordination between key tourism stakeholders in the Himalaya region. 

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