Why Nepal’s Tourism Future Depends on Branding

On July 23, 2026, a 29-room hotel perched above Jomsom overtook multiple properties across the world to be named the best luxury hotel on Earth. Shinta Mani Mustang, which opened in 2023 AD, topped Robb Report’s 2026 list of the 50 Greatest Luxury Hotels on Earth, chosen by a panel of 24 of the world’s leading luxury travel advisers. About two years before this, Fire and Ice, a Thamel pizzeria that has been serving the same wood-fired pizza since 1995 AD, made it on the New York Times’ list of ’15 of [their] Readers’ Favorite Pizza Places Around the World.’ Nobody in Nepal planned either of this global recognition. It happened organically.

This is the pattern behind most of what is working for Nepal’s tourism image right now. Across Instagram and TikTok, you can find multiple videos of tourists sharing content appreciating and loving Nepal. Not just its mountains and known destinations, but also the people, food, and culture. Domestically as well, pages like ‘Nepal 8^th Wonder’ are some of the most followed Nepali handles on social media that dictate which place becomes the next go-to destination. Beyond this, Nepal has been sitting on a wave of international goodwill for years now through global Nepalis that the world meets. And recently this attention has been sharpened further by the global attention that followed the recent political upheaval. None of this attention was planned. But building on this momentum should be.

With the government announcing 2085 BS (2028 AD) as the Visit Nepal Year through its budget for this year, it is pertinent for the tourism industry, both public and private, to focus on building and consistently applying the Nepal brand that has been created through digital media. This article, therefore, dives into exactly why this is important for Nepal, what is the foundation that has been created for this, what are the obstacles, and what can be done.

Why Branding and Digital Marketing Matter

Many travel decisions today are made by scrolling on a phone rather than in a travel agent’s office or off a brochure. According to a study carried out by American Express in 2023 AD, 75% of almost 3000 respondents agreed that they were inspired to travel to a specific destination due to social media. Thus, if Nepal wants the Visit Nepal Year 2085 BS (2028 AD) to be successful, through more visitors, higher spending per visitor, and longer stays, the strength and consistency of the brand carrying that message and its implementation through digital/social media is a must-have.

Nepal has already seen the success of this domestically by accident. Certain hikes and lesser-known locations have seen real spikes in local visitation driven by nothing more than reels and TikToks made by people with no institutional backing. This has stayed true even for the monsoon season, a stretch of the calendar most stakeholders in the tourism industry had written off for years.

Internationally as well, the importance of branding and marketing for tourism has been highlighted in multiple examples from across the world. New Zealand’s ‘100% Pure’ campaign, for instance, has been running since 1999 AD and has been a masterclass in tourism branding. Not only does it highlight the diverse spread of option New Zealand has to offer its visitors, it also does so in an aesthetic, appealing, and strategic manner with a strong digital presence. As a result, the campaign helped grow arrivals from 1.6 million in 1999 AD to 3.34 million in 2016, which is remarkable for a country of five million people. Similarly, India’s “Incredible India” campaign nearly tripled arrivals over a similar stretch. Interestingly, the campaign also improved domestic travel habits. Meanwhile, Iceland took the 2010 AD Eyjafjallajökull eruption, an event that grounded half of European air travel, and turned it into “Inspired by Iceland,” a campaign that pushed the following year’s visitor numbers past what they’d been before the volcano blew. None of these ran on a clever tagline alone. Each country had a system behind this brand, sustained marketing infrastructure, and noteworthy digital infrastructure to make the destination appealing to visitors.

What Nepal has Already Built

Fortunately, Nepal isn’t building for 2028 AD with no foundation. The Nepal Tourism Board (NTB), set up in 1998 AD as a public-private partnership aimed to promote Nepal as a tourism destination, has run national campaigns nonstop since its inception including Visit Nepal 1998, Destination Nepal 2002, and Visit Nepal 2011. Each campaign has played a part in nudging the country’s global profile a bit further.

The real work, however, came with Visit Nepal 2020. NTB hired the design studio Image Ark to build Nepal a full visual identity from scratch. The brand identity that was created, based on the tagline of ‘Nepal – Lifetime Experiences’ was based on the explicit belief that “Nepal is so much more than Everest and trekking.” Created following research on destination brands from comparable countries such as Peru, Bhutan, Azerbaijan, and Turkey, this visual identity is a representation of the diversity of Nepal and a reflection of values that are found throughout the country. Its elements, including a signature golden yellow inspired by the Dashain marigolds, a red tika, the inclusion of the Devanagari script in the typography, an outline of the mountains, and multiple handmade patterns reflecting different facets of the country all weave together a striking identity for Nepal. The amount of thought that was put into the design also reflects in facts like the tika being subtly composed of Nepali flags, as shown below.

The studio also developed an extensive ecosystem of brand applications based on the identity, including hand-drawn illustrated maps of Kathmandu, signage templates for heritage sites, pocket publications for individual cities, handmade branded merchandise, airport uniforms, and labels for Nepali exports. The vision was for the brand to touch every point at which the country interacts with people, locals and tourists alike, from transportation to billboards to international fairs. Accompanying this visual identity are comprehensive branding guidelines, covering everything from the logo, tagline, and color palette to the application of these guidelines in exhibitions, print media, social media, and more.

Beyond the visual identity, NTB also created platforms like NepalNow with private tourism stakeholders, signaling to the world after the 2015 AD earthquake that Nepal was still standing and still open. More recently, NTB even struck a partnership with TikTok under the #LifetimeExperiences brand. Additionally, it has a modest social presence running with around 66,300 followers on Instagram and 35,100 on TikTok. Thus, adding it all up, there is a foundation for Nepali tourism to make the Visit Nepal Year a success. However, this is contingent on whether it can overcome the implementation problems it has faced in the past, as outlined in the next section.

Where the Implementation has Fallen Short

As we now know, the Nepal tourism brand exists and is comprehensive in what it is trying to do by promising visitors experiences of a lifetime. However, this brand is used by almost nobody outside the NTB. For instance, Koshi Province ran its own tourism ads at QFX cinemas this year but none of these ads carried the national identity. Not the colors, the tagline, and not even the logo. This is just one example of the lack of federal, provincial, and local coordination that has led to a scattered brand. The advent of COVID-19 explains the initial disruption, but not why the gap still exists six years later.

Even NTB’s own digital footprint tells a version of the same story. There are four websites within NTB’s umbrella: the main site, NepalNow, PhotoNepal, and the trade site. While the bones on all four are genuinely solid, they run as four separate islands with duplicated content, tangled UI/UX, and no shared logic pulling them together. Also, the trade website does not follow any of the branding guidelines built by Image Ark. This contrasts with websites like those of Visit New Zealand which paint a clear and inviting picture for both tourists and tourism trade operators. Similarly, while the social media presence is notable, it is inconsistent in its branding which feels ad hoc rather than planned. Moreover, NTB has almost zero presence on important platforms like Xiaohongshu which dictates the travel plans of many Chinese travelers.

However, this marketing problem isn’t unique to NTB alone. A lot of private sector stakeholders also fall into the same traps of not giving branding and digital marketing the importance it deserves. Many private tour operators, hotels, restaurants, and more do not have a strong digital presence. Additionally, both the private sector and government are stuck promoting the exact same handful of places and experiences with limited storytelling even though Nepal has a lot more to offer. Moreover, domestic tourists, a market that is visibly growing, gets almost no attention from either side.

Way Forward

Nepali tourism does not need a new brand. It just needs proper implementation by all tourism stakeholders, not just the NTB. There are many low-hanging fruits to consider here. Firstly, the brand should be applied everywhere consistently, including by provinces, local governments, hotels, agencies, restaurants and more. Secondly, digital presence, across websites and social media platforms, should be well-planned and well-executed in terms of cohesiveness, aesthetics, and storytelling based on the ‘Lifetime Experiences’ tagline. They must lure visitors with the promise of providing experiences of a lifetime. For instance, in terms of NTB, the main site can be the local to “discover your lifetime experience,” PhotoNepal and NepalNow can become platforms that encourage visitors to “share your lifetime experience,” and the trade website can help stakeholders “deliver lifetime experiences.” All this must be used to promote more of Nepal than the narrow vision the world has of it and to more target audiences, including domestic tourists.

Moreover, there are many opportunities for both public and private stakeholders to tell the story of Nepal and all it has to offer by commissioning, or partnering with, Nepali talent such as photographers, filmmakers, creators, animators and more that are already proving, unpaid and unprompted, that authentic footage of this country beats anything generated.

None of Nepal’s recent wins, including the Robb Report ranking, the New York Times list, the reels that keep making obscure trails go viral, were planned. Nepal has been getting this kind of attention for years without asking for it. What it hasn’t done is build the system to make sure that attention adds up to something. Visit Nepal Year 2085 BS gives the country roughly two years to fix that, and the fix doesn’t require inventing anything new. It requires NTB, provinces, and every hotel, agency, and restaurant with a social media account to start pulling in the same direction, on purpose, instead of leaving it to chance the way Nepal has for years now.

This piece is based on research carried out by Beed Management for the Nepal Tourism Board’s International Marketing Strategy and Five-Year Action Plan, developed in partnership with UNDP’s Sustainable Tourism Project.