Visitors' impacts on remote destinations: An evaluation of a Nepalese mountainous village with intense tourism activity

Tourism universally generates benefits and costs to the destination and community. Knowledge on the impacts of tourism on local communities provides important insight in formulating strategies for long term sustainable tourism. Therefore, there is a need to evaluate the impacts of tourism before establishing/expanding the industry at a particular destination. In this study, we assessed the economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits of tourism in a remote mountainous village that experiences the high pressure of tourism activity. Data were collected for the perceived and anticipated social, economic, and environmental costs/benefits of tourism via in person interview with local residents, hotel owners, and local governmental bodies through unstructured questionnaire survey. The data were analysed using a Leopold matrix. The result revealed that tourism generates noteworthy economic and social benefits to the destination community, while environmental benefits are not obvious. The negative impacts in all the three aspects are minimal and within the threshold limit. Our quantitative assessment revealed that the net impact of tourism in Ghorepani is impressively positive (>40%). The findings of this result thus suggest that tourism is the most lucrative industry of Ghorepani and its further promotion can contribute to the broader enhancement of social and economic status of the village. This finding may have greater implications beyond the case study, and suggests that tourism if extended as the primary industry in other similar mountainous villages can play a pivotal role to enhance the socio-economic status of the country. Thus, the current findings provide important insights in formulating plans and policies for the management of sustainable tourism across the mountainous destinations.