Air Connectivity after Liberalization in Aviation and its Impact on Tourist Arrival

Abstract

This study attempts to trace air connectivity after liberalization of aviation in Nepal by showing interrelationship among air service agreement, flight movement, total tourist arrived and tourist arriving by air comparing situation before and after liberal sky policy. Mixed method research was followed where quantitative data were adopted from secondary sources and qualitative data were collected from primary Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) with three experts. This study was conducted on the basis of Sequential Explanatory Mixed Method Design where quantitative data were analyzed to identify situation of air connectivity and tourist arrivals before and after the liberal air policy and qualitative data were collected via KIIs. The quantitative findings were interpreted and explained mixing with remarks of experts. There is high correlation among passenger movement, tourist arrivals, tourists arrived by air and flight arrivals. Flight arrivals and total passenger movement have highest correlation (r = 0.970, p < 0.01) in comparison with other variables. The linear regression result also indicates that flight arrivals are strong predicator for tourist arrivals (β = 0.919, p < 0.001). The model shows that increased air connectivity has positive effect on tourist arrived by air. The ANOVA result (p<.001) highlights the statistically significant difference in tourist arrivals by air before and after liberal sky policy. The F-statistic value (55.367) indicates that variance explained by regression is larger than variance kept unexplained. The large variance in significant level of p<.001 shows that there is significant change in tourist arrival after liberal sky policy.