Kashmir attracts millions of tourists every year. We can easily say that every resort is gathering a few million tourists every calendar year. Even places like Dodhpathri are witnessing a huge rush of tourists in off-season months like October and November. This is truly heartening. What is even more heartening is to see that a lot of foreign tourists have marked a few locations in Kashmir as first-choice winter destinations and a good many have made it a point to come to Kashmir as repeat tourist itinerary or so to say recurring tourists. Definitely the treatment they got in the first visit is enough of an indicator that they wanted to come repeatedly every year.
As per the Good Morning Kashmir newspaper, the world-famous ski-resort of Gulmarg has been the first choice of domestic and foreign tourists this year as the destination has attracted almost 14 lakh tourists in the first ten months of the ensuing year. The figure includes 9,000 foreigners and almost four lakh local visitors. This is heartening to read. Attracting 9000 tourists for a solitary tourist location is a good achievement.
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However, compared to the tourist places in Ladakh this is still a small number. The moonland landscape of Leh, the endless roads, the gushing rivers, the treeless colourful jagged peaks are all great attractions for the foreign tourist. In the 1980s we used to see that this huge flow of foreign tourists who would visit Ladakh also had Kashmir on their schedule. This trend stopped in the 90s due to the political situation. Now with the political situation turning to normal and Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha spawning an industrial era in the Kashmir valley, it is high time that we focus our energies on wooing foreign tourists back to Kashmir. In the 1980s we had polyglot guides who could speak French and German with equal fluency as they could speak English.
We can start with popularising the importance of learning French, German, and Spanish languages. We need to indulge in rigorous digital marketing of our tourist destinations. We need to participate with zeal and add creativity to all tourism-related events happening across the globe. All this is needed to woo foreign tourists back to the valley in great numbers.
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