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This paper discusses how the investment on tourism sector created direct employment opportunities in Pokhara valley. The type of business, frequency of tourist visits; time and size of employment, investmentand location information have been brought under consideration in the study. Initial survey was carried out through person to person interviews in respondent's homes and offices in all business households of Pokhara valley in the year 2009 whereas a short-term follow up survey was conducted with some key informants and major stakeholders in the year 2017. A few government officials, major stakeholders and key persons of the different business associations were also asked questions in a follow up survey about the trend of employment and income generation through tourism in July 2017. The result of initial survey reported that total annual income generation from tourism related business is Rs. 2699.75 million. In average, with every million Rupees of investment on Hotel and Lodge, the employment of 13.66 persons can be generated. Likewise, Banks and Financial institutions also create employment of 13.34 persons with the same level of investment. The total direct employment generated by the tourism industry in Pokhara is 12343. Fooding and Lodging business occupies 54.64 percentage of employment, institutional sources occupy 17.52 percent, retail trade businesses occupy 14.53 percent, tourist product businesses occupy 7.38 percent and travel related business occupies only 5.37 percent share. It was reported that there are more than 1908 households directly involved in tourism related business. The opinions of the key informants and stakeholders involved in the survey of 2017 revealed that there is an increment of number of business households by 43.8% in comparison to 2009 and Employment created by those businesses was 85.29% more than the survey of 2009. Finally, the result shows that the additional investment on retail trade business and tourist product business also has high potential to generate more employment opportunities. The study also shows that there has been a tremendous increase in number of tourists and businesses due to which very big size of investments have been made in the industry.
