Kashmir housefull: Tourists with nowhere to go

By Sameer Yasir

A cool breeze swept through the tarmac when Manoj Kumar and his wife Deerja arrived at Srinagar’s Sheikh-ul-Alam International Airport for their planned honeymoon among the tall mountains, lush green meadows and pristine waters of Kashmir valley. More than twenty jam packed flights arrive everyday with tourists like the Kumars from different parts of country and outside.

Once in Srinagar, they straightaway descended on Boulevard, a curved road flanking the Dal Lake which is famous among tourists for Mughal Gardens, houseboats, roadside eateries and guesthouses. The hunt for a comfortable budget hotel is a herculean task these days in Srinagar, says Manoj. “Almost all the hotels alongside the lake were full to capacity, and we couldn’t afford A Class hotels,” he told Firstpost. They managed to find a budget hotel on the edge of a posh locality in Rajbagh, an uptown area of Srinagar.

But not many tourists are lucky like the Kumars.

Kashmir valley has been facing a unique infrastructural crisis in the last two tourist seasons. After the ’negative peace’ started settling in Kashmir Valley post 2010 unrest, the tourist influx is growing. Compared to 10.02 million tourists in 2010, the officials at Tourism Department say that 12.24 million tourists visited J&K in 2011. The major improvement was the number of foreigners which gradually swelled from 46,000 in 2010 to 68,000 in 2011. In 2012, the record was broken again when the number of tourists touched almost 14 lakh, with 12,75000 domestic and the rest foreigners, making it the most successful year in the tourism history of the state. According to official estimates, four to five thousand tourists arrive every day in Kashmir, a number which could double during the pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Amarnath. As the situation started improving, an aggressive campaign by the state government in consultation with the union tourism ministry not only assured the return of tourists but also of Bollywood.

This is too much of a good thing. The tourism infrastructure cannot handle the tourists arriving in scenic valley. There just aren’t enough hotels to accommodate this influx.

“The existing occupancy in Srinagar is eighty percent, but in hill stations like Gulmarg, Sonmarg and Pahalgam, it is almost full,” Talat Parveez, Director of Jammu and Kashmir’s Tourism department, told Firstpost. Despite a 30-day strike and curfew after Mohammad Afzal Guru was hanged on 9 February inside Tihar Jail in Delhi this year, the Tourism Department remains optimistic. “More records will be broken this year,” Talat Parveez says.

But most of the tourists complain about not finding right accommodation for the prices that they would pay in other tourist destinations. With management of the largely privatised hotel industry being beyond the government’s control, prices are skyrocketing. Now even budget hotels have started doubling their rates. Flight costs have also tripled.

“Going to Singapore and finding a budget hotel is easier than in Kashmir. It would take same amount to travel to South East Asia as it does from Delhi to Kashmir,” Akash Soni, a businessman from Mumbai who arrived in Kashmir on June 14 told Firstpost.

The problem is more than two decades of violent conflict in Kashmir Valley have crippled the infrastructure as very few tourists came to the Valley at that time when foreign embassies in New Delhi were issuing travel advisories to their citizens against travelling to Kashmir after the killing of the five foreign tourists.

Over the years of violence, the infrastructure has crumbled and most of the hotels were occupied by paramilitary forces. Over the last three years, more than 130 rooms have been vacated by paramilitary forces in Srinagar city alone and work has been going on these hotels to resume their business.

The scarcity of rooms is felt more acutely in smaller towns like Gulmarg, which was accorded the best ‘All Seasons Destination of the World’ last year by Pacific Asia Travel Writers Association (PATWA) at ITB Berlin, the world’s leading travel trade show. This famous ski resort has a capacity of around 1400 rooms while more than ten thousand people visit Gulmarg everyday at the peak of tourism season.

Pahalgam, another famous holiday resort in South Kashmir, also a route for the annual Amarnath pilgrimage, has more than fifteen hundred rooms but the hotels can’t accommodate millions of pilgrims who stay on the banks in tents.

With the growing demand, Class-A hotels have already doubled the rates, charging anywhere from Rs 15,000 to Rs 18,000 per night. Kashmir-based private business houses have also started to jump into the hotel industry but only movers and shakers in the political circles of the state get permission for that. They are booked to capacity as well.

The blame for crippled tourism infrastructure has also to be shared by the state government which has not given permission for any construction and repair works in happening tourist places like Boulevard and Pahalgam since 2009.

“Two decades of turmoil in state have deteriorated the tourism infrastructure. We are not even able to cater to the basic needs of the tourists,” says Mohammad Showkat Chowdhary, president of the Kashmir Hotels and Restaurant Association. “We don’t want government to remove the ban altogether, but at least allow the existing infrastructure to be upgraded,” he says.

Adding to the existing difficulties are more than 3000 Jammu based government employees whom the state government has to provide more than 120 hotels every year as part of the annual darbar move when the state’s administrative capital moves from Jammu to Srinagar. These hotels are occupied for six months in Srinagar when the tourist session is at its peak.

The last two years have also seen an unexpected influx of tourist from South East Asia particularly Chinese tourists arriving in droves in Kashmir. “Almost eighty percent of the foreign tourists come from these regions after we conducted road shows in South East Asia,” Talat Parveez says.

Mushtaq Ahmad Chaya, the state’s top hotelier who runs a chain of hotel and restaurants across India says, “If we would improve infrastructure facilities in our state, we will become leading tourist destination in the world. We have got all requisites to become the best tourism place and most preferred place on the planet.”