The Impact of Disasters on a Heritage Tourist Destination: A Case Study of Nepal Earthquakes

Abstract

This study examines the degree of macroeconomic recovery of the Nepal tourism industry after a natural disaster using the autoregressive integrated moving average model (ARIMA). The study investigated the case of Nepal’s earthquakes in 2015 and examined the impact of the earthquakes on tourism inflows and GDP using time series data from 1990 to 2018. The results show that the increasing trend in the number of tourists changes in the post-earthquake period. In particular, the excess in tourist demand by age and purpose of visits after the earthquake indicates natural disaster as a potential reason for a tourism demand boost, often described as dark tourism in literature. This research shows the process of a heritage tourist destination assessing macroeconomic recovery from a natural disaster and fills the gap in the literature regarding purpose-based tourism demand and a link between dark tourism and disaster recovery on a heritage tourism destination.