Kashmir witnesses highest tourist footfall of decade, hotels and huts in Gulmarg jam-packed

Kashmir: Autumn, winter season remained main months of attraction, October 93 thousand, November it was 1,27, thousand and in December till 25th it’s 1,18 thousand tourist number that visited Kashmir. 

Kashmir tourism is at its best in the last decade. If we see, the number of tourists visiting Kashmir it’s has crossed the highest numbers of previous years. 

According to the numbers of the tourism department, this year up to 25th December 6,40,000 tourists have visited Kashmir since January. October, November, and December broke all the previous records as autumn and winter season, had remained the main attraction for tourists across the country and some foreign tourists have also visited the Valley. 

Deputy Director Kashmir tourism Ahsan-ul-Haq said “, in October we had 93000 tourists and in November it crossed first time 1 lac mark and 1,27,000 tourist visited Kashmir and in December up to 25th it has already crossed the 1,18,000 mark, and we are expecting we  will have some more thousand tourists till the end of tourist in Kashmir as seeing the bookings at many tourist places” 

Kashmir was having very poor tourist footfall in the last two years because of COVID pandemic. But post COVID the tourism department along with tourist players worked very hard to revive the tourism industry of Kashmir, many initiatives were taken. The main step was to get all tourist players and tourism department officials fully vaccinated, which they did on war footing and this time 97% of all those double doses vaccinated. 

Ahsan-ul-Haq said, "we did aggressively vaccination of tourist players we have here and around 98% of those are vaccinated, we enhanced the post covid capacity capabilities of tourist players."

Besides many other steps were taken, the department along with tourist players did roadshows promotions across the country to attract the maximum number of tourists to the valley. Around 75 new lesser-known tourist destinations were opened in Kashmir which resulted in a boost in tourism, in summer Gurez area of Bandipora at LOC witnessed a heavy rush to tourists. 

Ahsan-ul-Haq said, "post COVID, department and tourist players' joint effort made revive to tourism in Kashmir. I'm happy to share that around 6 lac tourists have visited Kashmir, we hope in winter more people will visit. We did aggressive promotion and we are witnessing its results now."

 "A historic step we took this year is that we explored 75 lesser known destination which we are promoting apart from the destinations we have. We promoted Gurez aggressively and we saw a huge tourist flow there in summers. We are trying to keep Sonamarg open for winters, Pahalgam is already packed," he added.

Besides that, adventure tourism was also taken into consideration, in summer, tracking programs were conducted and in  winters skiing and winter sports are on cards. 

Ahsan said "this year we saw tourists in summers were attracted towards tracking and many people visited Valley for that, this diversification did help us to get adventure-loving tourists here.” 

Department is starting a new year welcome program with a week-long celebration that started on Saturday (December 25) on Christmas, at the twin tourist resorts of Gulmarg and Pahalgam. The celebration will end on the night of December 31. It is to celebrate the winter season of tourism. It is a grand weeklong festival to send message that Kashmir is ready to host tourists.

The ski resort of Gulmarg is jam-packed within 100% occupancy,  hotels, huts and guest houses are all booked. There are much higher occupancy in Pahalgam too if we compare the place with previous years. Department is trying to keep Sonamarg tourist destination open for winters this year otherwise in past it remain closed for winters. 

Diversification of products and opening of new tourist destinations and also boosting adventure tourism and heritage tourism are future plans of tourist department and they hope that next year will be booming tourism in Kashmir if all goes well. 

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