Autumn is here but tourist footfall meagre

Terrorism has clearly taken its toll in Jammu and Kashmir with tourism taking a massive hit in the peak of autumn. Local tourist guides and hoteliers were waiting for this season as they were expecting lot of tourists from Bengal on the eve of Dussehra, but the tourist footfall has not increased so far.

Even after lot of persuasion by the State Tourism Department, very less Bollywood crews have come to shoot in the season of autumn in Kashmir Valley. Recently, a Bollywood crew did come to the Valley but they straightway went to Kargil for the shoot. The film tiltled ‘Kalank’ was being shot in Kargil with Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan in its lead.

Tourism industry had taken a hit in 2014 in the wake of September floods but spate in terrorist activities post-Burhan Wani killing in the summer 2016 proved to be the last nail in its coffin. Thousands of families in Kashmir are struggling to survive this year as the tourist season has failed to pick up and the inflow of tourists from Bengal has been negligible so far this month.

According to Tourism officials, they were trying their level best to increase the tourist traffic to the Valley. A senior official told this newspaper that the Central government has already approved Rs 2,000 crore under Prime Minister’s Development Plan for the tourism infrastructure projects in the state.

He claimed that a lot of foreign tourists have visited during the current season to Kashmir. Giving figures, the department recently said that they have already received 41,000 foreigners this year from different countries of the world.

Even after a series of flop seasons, the industry is trying to reach fresh markets. The people connected with the trade here told The Sunday Guardian that recently some of them had gone to Russia and Bangladesh looking for tourists. “We made a group and decided to explore new markets like Malaysia, Thailand and Russia. We got encouraging response,” said Shahzad Ahmad of the group.

He said that due to their own efforts to survive in this trade, they have been able to bring tourists from Bangladesh and Malaysia. He said that they will again visit Russia as they have feeling that the Russian tourists were ready to visit Kashmir.