Tourism on increase but huge dip in foreign tourist arrivals
By: Muzamil Bhat CK
Srinagar
While the indications are showing that it would be a record breaking year for the tourism industry in Jammu and Kashmir, the figures show that 95% of dip in the forieng tourists who used to throng Kashmir valley in the spring season.
Government has said that domestic entrance has increased by nearly 20 percent. The figures with the tourism department available for the past three years indicate that the dip in the arrival of foreign tourists to Kashmir valley is almost 95.22 percent.
According to the official figures available with the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), in the past three years, the highest number of foreign tourist arrivals in Kashmir valley was recorded in the year 2019.
In the year 2019, at least 33,779 foreign tourists and 53,175,3 domestic tourists had visited Kashmir valley.
In the following year 2020, there had a drastic fall among both foreign and domestic tourist arrivals by more than 89 percent and 93 percent respectively.
The official figures reveal that in this fiscal, a total of 3897 foreign and 37,370 domestic tourists had visited the valley.
Likewise, in the previous fiscal 2021, the number of foreign tourist arrivals in the Valley had dipped almost by 95.22 percent, however, the domestic tourist arrivals had increased by nearly 20 percent.
In this year only 1615 foreign and 6,641,99 domestic tourists had arrived in Kashmir.
This information was revealed by the Deputy Director of tourism and planning department in a reply to Right to Information (RTI) application filed by the activists M M Shuja.
With KNO inputs
