Tourist arrivals in November fell 18.31 percent to 20,026 the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) said Tuesday.

A comparison with the same period last year shows a net loss of 4,489 arrivals, the NTB said. Third country tourist arrivals have come down by 25 percent registering a net loss of 4,985 as compared to the same period of last year. But Indian tourist arrivals have followed the same increasing trend that

started in June and increased in November by 11 percent as compared to the same period last year.

In the Asian market, the arrivals from Japan and Taiwan have registered growth of 3 and 10 percent respectively. China could not keep the continuous growth of previous months and has gone down by 4

per cent. Sri Lanka has recorded growth of 52 per cent.

Among the third countries, the Italian and Spanish markets have shown a positive sign, recording growth of 82 percent and 116 percent respectively. The higher growths in these markets were observed because the base figures were low. However, the negative growth this year of major tourist generating markets like Germany, USA, UK, Denmark and Netherlands has continued.

Arrivals from India was up 11 percent to 4,939 visitors; Japan up three percent to 2,047 visitors;. China down four percent to 298 visitors; Germany down 26 percent to 1,384 visitors;. UK down 41 percent

to 1,890 visitors;. USA down 42 percent to 1,306 visitors and Netherlands down 48 percent to 520 visitors.