Foreign tourists fix a date with Kashmir again

After years of decline, Kashmir is once again bustling with foreign tourists with over 15,000 travellers visiting the Valley since the beginning of this year.

From August 2019 to November 2021, empty houseboats, vacant hotels and deserted resorts were a common sight in Kashmir, but the revival of the tourism sector has brought back cheers on the faces of people associated with the trade.

While lakhs of domestic tourists have been visiting Kashmir, the gradual arrival of foreigners has spurred the mood of tourism stakeholders. Against 4,028 foreign tourists in 2022, in less than six months of this year, 15,161 foreign tourists have visited the Valley and the figure is set to go up by the year-end.

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A houseboat owner in Dal Lake said that he had a group of foreign tourists in recent days and two more groups are expected to arrive by the month-end. “Majority of foreigners arriving in Kashmir are from South-East Asian countries which is a good sign,” he said.

The successful conduct of the G20 Tourism Working group meeting in May is likely to be a game changer in the tourism sector of J&K. “The beauty and magnificence coupled with the warmth and hospitality of J&K were portrayed on a global level in the G20 event. This is bound to attract more and more foreign tourists to J&K,” an official of the tourism department told DH.

At the third G20 Tourism Working Group meeting held in Srinagar in May, the Ministry of Tourism and the Jammu and Kashmir administration pushed for the revival of not only tourism but also film-making in the Valley.

He said the G20 meeting held from May 22 to 25 is set to give positive results as more foreign tourists are expected to arrive in Kashmir in the months ahead. “We are also looking forward to seeing a good number of foreign tourists during winter this year,” the official said and added many countries are set to lift the negative travel advisories that bar their citizens from travelling to Kashmir after the G20 meeting.

However, it is not security but infrastructure and transport that pose the biggest challenges to the revival.

“We lack infrastructure for high end tourism and for that the government has to come up with a plan sooner or later. Tourism is one of the major sources of livelihood in Kashmir and local residents would never want anything to happen that affects tourism. A simple shikara feeds the stomach of so many people,” said Lateef Lone, a hotelier.

Kashmir was a tourist's paradise during the 1970s and 1980s with both domestic and foreigners thronging the Valley in large numbers. However, tourism suffered a huge setback after the eruption of militancy in 1989.