Tourists evade Kashmir again

SRINAGAR, JUNE 25: If the government puts the clamp on information from Kargil, hoteliers and travel agents in Kashmir would probably be ...

SRINAGAR, JUNE 25: If the government puts the clamp on information from Kargil, hoteliers and travel agents in Kashmir would probably be the first to welcome it. News from the battle-front has been bad for the business. Just when things were looking up after years of turmoil in the Valley, Kargil has managed to scare the tourists off once again.

The state8217;s tourism department expected at least one lakh people to visit the Valley in June, the month when tourist arrivals traditionally peak. Thanks to Kargil, only a third of that number might actually turn up. In May 8212; though the fighting had picked up towards the end of the month 8212; over 69,000 tourists had arrived. But there has been a sharp drop since then: as of June 17, only 27,000 visited.

8220;It has been a bad June,8221; Parwez Dewan, the state8217;s Tourism Secretary admitted at a press briefing recently, where representatives from the associations of hoteliers, houseboat-owners and travel agents had been invited. But he still hopes to salvage8217; the rest ofthe tourist season. With some cooperation8217; from the media.

Dewan and those in the travel business would like to kill the messenger, if they could, for taking the bad news all over the country and the rest of the world. Recently, Australia and Japan issued advisories cautioning their nationals against visiting the Valley.

The travel trade is at pains to stress that though there is a battle on in Kargil, Srinagar and other tourist destinations in the Valley are as normal as they were when tourists started coming back again. 8220;If you could mention in your reports that Srinagar is 250 kilometres away and the Valley is safe, we would be grateful,8221; A Rauf, who heads a travel agents association pleaded.

Ghulam Qadir Khan, who heads a houseboat owners association, lamented that it was no use attending travel promotion fairs all over the country when bad news from the state was undoing the effort. Talking about the plight of the people who depended on tourism, he reminded that 8220;press people are also humanbeings.8221;

Dewan wanted the press to delink8217; Kargil from Kashmir, from Jammu and from Ladakh. Asked how it was possible, the official went to the extent of suggesting that news reports on developments on the LoC should not carry the Srinagar dateline.

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Kargil happened when the travel trade in the Valley was predicting a tourism explosion. In April last year 1800 tourists visited Kashmir. This year the figure zoomed to nearly 39,000 for the same month. Some experts were predicting a five-fold increase in tourist traffic this year compared to 1998, but even conservative estimates said tourist arrivals would at least double.

Despite Kargil the tourist arrival figures have already crossed the numbers recorded last year 8212; 1.43 lakh had visited Kashmir till June 17 this year compared to the 1.09 lakh during the entire 1998.

Though the Tourism department maintains that the coming months would again see the tourists flowing in, the travel trade is worried. A prominent travel agent said at today8217;s mediabriefing that his agency recorded about 25 to 30 percent post-Kargil cancellations from people who had booked their holidays in Kashmir.

Speaking informally later, another agent however revealed that only five out of the 15 to 20 tourist groups he had booked for visits from July onwards had not cancelled. The shelling in Kargil had sent the rest scurrying for cover.