Hotel Trademark Registration in Nepal: Class 43 and the Hospitality Filing Plan
Hotel trademark registration in Nepal: Class 43 for lodging and food services, mountain-name limits, restaurant and spa sub-brands, and the fees and renewals.
A hotel's name outlives its furniture. Guests book the name, taxis know the name, the signboard on the highway is the name — and in Nepal's hospitality market, where every property seems to have a Himalaya in its title, the registrable name is harder to choose and more valuable to own.
Class 43 is where that name lives. Here is the filing plan, the naming limits, and the sub-brands a hotel should protect alongside it.
In short
Hotel trademark registration in Nepal centres on Class 43 — food and drink services and temporary accommodation — filed as a single-class application at the DOI for NPR 1,000 plus NPR 5,000 registration, with a 7-year renewable term and a roughly 90-day opposition window. Mountain and place names face geographic-descriptor limits, restaurant and spa sub-brands need their own filings, and management or franchise deals run on recorded licences at NPR 2,000 per mark.
Class 43: the hotel's home class
Temporary accommodation and food and drink services sit in Class 43 of the Nice Classification — the class for hotels, resorts, guesthouses, restaurants and bars. Nepal files it as a single-class application: one Schedule 1(c) form with four specimens of the mark, NPR 1,000 to file and NPR 5,000 to register in current practice, publication in the Industrial Property Bulletin opening a roughly 90-day opposition window, then a 7-year term renewable indefinitely.
The specification claims the hotel's actual services — accommodation, restaurant, bar, banquet — and examiners read it against earlier Class 43 marks, which in a market full of similar hospitality names is where most objections originate.
Naming a hotel: the mountain-name problem
Nepali hotel branding leans on geography — Everest, Annapurna, Machhapuchhre, the lake, the valley — and trademark law treats geographic names with suspicion: no trader should monopolise a place that competitors need to describe their own services. A mark that is only a mountain name struggles; a distinctive combination — a coined name beside the region — registers far more reliably.
Two more checks matter in hospitality. Cross-script identity: the Devanagari version on the Nepali signboard is the same brand, and sound-alikes across scripts count as conflicts under Section 18(1). And distinctiveness: names built from 'hotel', 'lodge' and 'guest house' describe the service — the distinctive core is what gets protected.
Hotel trademark registration in Nepal: filing the brand
Search before the signboard is budgeted
Screen the proposed name across the DOI's published records — exact, phonetic, Devanagari — including the hospitality category's crowded field of lookalikes.
File in Class 43
The application claims the hotel's services in one class; an unopposed filing typically registers in six to twelve months, with the certificate starting the 7-year renewal clock.
Use, renew, watch
Genuine use within a year keeps the registration safe; renewal is due within 35 days of each 7-year expiry at NPR 3,500 per class; and a Bulletin watch catches the next lookalike application inside the 90-day window.
Beyond the hotel name: the sub-brand portfolio
Each sub-brand is its own application and its own renewal — NPR 3,500 per class per 7-year term — and the one-year use rule applies to each: file what will genuinely trade, not what might.
| Brand element | Class | When to file |
|---|---|---|
| Hotel name and logo | 43 | Before opening — the anchor filing |
| Restaurant or bar sub-brand | 43 | When it trades under its own name |
| Spa or wellness brand | 44 | When wellness services run separately |
| Packaged products — teas, spices, bakery | Own goods class | When products are sold beyond the property |
Management contracts and franchise deals
Hotels grow through structures where the brand changes hands in substance but not in ownership: management agreements, franchise deals, foreign brands entering with local partners. Every such arrangement is a licence in law — written terms, quality control, territory, fees — and licence recordal at the DOI for NPR 2,000 per mark puts the arrangement on the register where disputes and diligence will look for it.
The inbound pattern deserves its own caution: a foreign hotel brand licensing into Nepal should register locally through a local agent before the property opens, because an unregistered licensed brand gives the Nepali partner little protection against third-party squatters — and none against the licensor's later change of heart.
Want this handled for your brand?
IP Watch monitors new trademark publications in Nepal and alerts you to potentially conflicting marks — with the context needed to review them.
This article is general information, not legal advice.