Digital Marketing for Aviation in Nepal
The moment is a search on a phone: a flight to Delhi for Dashain, a mountain flight for a visiting cousin, a helicopter to Lukla when the morning flight is cancelled. Whoever is at the top of that search, official or not, gets the booking. I help aviation businesses in Nepal own that moment.
Animated flight booking: a route is searched, an aircraft flies an arc between two airports on the map, the departures board fills and one flight is booked, showing aviation marketing as searches that end in tickets.
I'm Shashikant Shah, a digital marketing expert in Kathmandu. I work with airlines, charter and helicopter operators, travel agents and aviation training institutes in Nepal on what decides who gets the booking: the official presence, the route pages, the search ads and the tracking. For Nepal Airlines Corporation I removed impersonating pages, verified the official presence and ran route campaigns for Dubai, Delhi and the domestic sectors. My prices are published, and because I'm also a software engineer I build the pages and the tracking myself.
Short answer: digital marketing for aviation in Nepal is mostly about being the official result. You need a verified presence on Google, Facebook and Instagram, fake pages reported and removed, a page for every route or service that loads fast on a phone, and search ads timed for the season. Then tracking, so you know what each booking cost.
How aviation customers choose in Nepal
Nobody searches for an airline's marketing. They search "Kathmandu to Dubai flight", "mountain flight price" or "helicopter to Lukla", and Google shows a booking site, an aggregator and sometimes a page pretending to be you. The passenger taps the first one that looks official. If your own site isn't clearly the official one, the booking and the trust go to someone else.
Many passengers on the Dubai and Delhi sectors are Nepalis working in the Gulf and India, and their families booking for them from home. They search on a phone and pay with what they have: a card abroad, eSewa or Khalti at home. A route page that loads slowly or takes one kind of payment loses them at the last step.
Domestic flights are decided by the weather as much as the fare. When Lukla or Jomsom is cancelled, passengers ask on WhatsApp, Viber and Facebook, and the operator who answers first keeps the passenger. Charter and helicopter buyers choose the operator whose number they already have.
Travel agents and students choose differently again. Agents search for your agent portal and your commission terms. Students search "pilot training Nepal", then compare on Facebook and YouTube for weeks before they call. Dashain, Tihar and the trekking season from Ashwin to Mangsir start online long before the first booking.
The problems I see most often:
- Pages that impersonate the airline: copied logos, a fake booking form and a phone number that isn't yours, ranking above the official site.
- No verified official presence. The Google Business Profile, Facebook and Instagram aren't verified, so passengers can't tell which account is real.
- No route pages of your own. "Kathmandu to Dubai flight" lands on an aggregator every time, never on your page.
- A booking path that's slow on a phone and doesn't offer the wallets passengers in Nepal use.
- No tracking, so nobody knows whether the Google ad, the Meta ad or the travel agent brought the booking.
What I do for aviation
- Google Business Profile management: your official presence verified on Google, Facebook and Instagram, with the right name, hours, phone and links, so passengers can tell you from the copies.
- Technical SEO: documenting and reporting impersonating pages, then making the official site the one Google trusts, so the fakes lose ground and stay gone.
- Google Ads for route campaigns: Dubai, Delhi and domestic sectors, in the words passengers type, timed for Dashain, Tihar and the trekking season, with a cost per booking you can see.
- Meta ads for the diaspora and their families: the Gulf, India, Australia and the UK on one side, Kathmandu and the districts on the other, for the same route.
- Route and service pages that load fast on a phone and lead to booking, plus a WhatsApp or Viber line for rebooking when the weather cancels a flight. I build it myself, as part of web development.
- Tracking: bookings, calls, WhatsApp clicks and agent enquiries counted in your own Analytics and ad accounts, so the monthly report says what changed and why.
The first 90 days
Days 1 to 30. I find every page and profile that uses your name, list the ones that aren't yours and start the reports to Google, Meta and the hosts. Your Business Profile and social accounts get verified and cleaned up. Tracking goes into the site and the ad accounts so there's a baseline before anything changes.
Days 31 to 60. The route pages and the service pages go live, one per sector or service, with the fare, the schedule and the way to book. The first route campaign starts on Google, small, so I can see which search terms bring bookings before spending more. If you sell through agents, the agent page goes up too.
Days 61 to 90. You and I look at the numbers together: bookings, calls, cost per booking and which impersonating pages are gone. Then the campaign scales on the sectors that pay. You get all of this as a written plan before we start, with what's not included.
Who I've worked with in aviation
Nepal Airlines Corporation is on my case studies page under the scope I delivered: removal of impersonating pages, a verified official presence, and route campaigns for Dubai, Delhi and the domestic sectors. I don't publish numbers from that engagement, and I won't invent them. When I publish an aviation result, it will have a baseline, a timeframe and a date, like every other figure on that page.
The closest published result by mechanism is an education consultancy's Google Ads account, where the cost per lead went from NPR 3,500 to NPR 2,100, a 40% drop, and leads roughly doubled on the same NPR 300,000 a month spend. That is the same search campaign work a route campaign depends on. It came from an engagement I worked on as part of an agency team, so read it as the account's total.
What it costs for airlines and aviation businesses
My prices are published. An audit of your official presence, your route pages and your tracking with a 30 day action plan is USD 249, about NPR 34,000. A four week sprint is USD 899, about NPR 122,000. Ongoing work is USD 1,800 a month, about NPR 245,000. What each one leaves out is on the pricing page. The first thirty minute call is free, and if the only urgent job is getting an impersonating page removed, I'll say so.
Questions airlines and aviation businesses ask
Someone is running a fake page in our name. Can you get it removed?
Yes. That is the work I did for Nepal Airlines Corporation. I document every copy, report it to Google, Meta and the host, and get your official site and profiles verified so passengers can tell which one is real. Removal takes weeks, not days, because some hosts are slow.
Do you handle flight booking systems directly?
I build the pages and the path to booking, and I connect them to the system you already use. A full reservation or ticketing system is a separate project I scope on its own, and if it needs a specialist vendor I'll say so.
Can you guarantee international booking volume?
No. I don't guarantee rankings or bookings. Demand on a sector moves with the season, the weather and the fare, and none of those are mine to control. What I commit to is a written plan, tracking you can check yourself and a monthly report that says what changed.
When should we start a route campaign for Dashain?
Bhadra at the latest. Families in the Gulf and India book Dashain and Tihar travel weeks ahead, and the campaign has to be live when they search. For mountain flights and the trekking season, start in Ashwin. Starting in the same month as everyone else means paying more for every click.
We're a small helicopter or charter operator. What budget makes sense?
Start with the audit at USD 249 (about NPR 34,000). Most small operators need a verified profile, one clear page per service and a WhatsApp line before any ads make sense. If ads are worth it, the plan will name a starting monthly spend. If they aren't yet, I'll say so and you keep the money.
When are you not the right person for an aviation business?
If you want a full airline reservation system built, or a brand campaign across TV and billboards, that's not me. I'm one person who does search, ads, pages and tracking in your own accounts. If your problem is bigger than that, I'll say so on the first call.
Related pages for airlines and aviation businesses
All industries · Where I work · Google Ads management · Technical SEO in Nepal · Google Business Profile management · All services.
Tell me about your aviation business
Send me the name and the sectors you sell. I'll search for you the way a passenger does, look at what ranks in your name and how people can book, and tell you the one thing I'd fix first, whether or not you hire me.