What will it take to make Pokhara a year-round tourist destination?

In April 2026, hotels, resorts and cafés in Lakeside were almost all full, and occupancy reportedly reached around 90 percent . Six months earlier, during Dashain 2025, hotels in Pokhara were running at around 35 percent . The lake was the same. The mountains were the same. The streets, the businesses and the services were the same. So what changed?

Politics, bad weather and the mood of the country. That’s what tourism in Pokhara looks like. One weekend the hotels and restaurants are packed, and everyone says tourism is back. A few slow weeks later, the same people say Lakeside is dying. The problem is not a shortage of tourists. It is that nobody can predict them.

A hotel can be full on Saturday and nearly empty by Monday. Pokhara needs tourists throughout the year, not only in the peak seasons. Who lives off lakeside The Phewa lake in Pokhara, Nepal’s tourism capital. Photo: Bikash Roka Magar According to the Hotel Association Pokhara, the city has around 1,200 tourist-standard hotels , and about 700 of them are in Lakeside and Damside.