Jammu and Kashmir’s tourism story has long been dominated by a handful of established destinations. Srinagar, Gulmarg, Pahalgam and a few other popular tourist circuits continue to attract the bulk of visitors, while hundreds of lesser-known villages and scenic areas remain largely outside the mainstream tourism map. The renewed Homestay Policy offers an opportunity to change that equation.
Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo’s emphasis on making homestays the “bedrock” of tourism in unexplored destinations is both timely and strategically important. In a region where ecological fragility, unemployment and uneven tourism distribution remain major challenges, community-based tourism can provide a more sustainable alternative to unchecked commercial expansion.
The numbers underline the potential. Jammu and Kashmir already has 2,802 homestay units with an accommodation capacity of 20,514 beds. These are not merely additional rooms for tourists; they represent thousands of households that can potentially become direct participants in the tourism economy.
The greatest strength of the homestay model is its local character. A visitor staying with a family is likely to experience the food, culture, traditions and hospitality of the place in a way that a conventional hotel cannot always provide. For remote villages, this can create a new economic ecosystem involving farmers, artisans, transporters, guides, cooks and local producers.
But policy announcements alone cannot guarantee success. The government must ensure that prospective homestay owners receive sustained handholding rather than one-time training. Hygiene, hospitality, digital bookings, food safety, waste management, emergency preparedness and basic communication skills should form an integral part of capacity-building programmes.
Equally important is access to affordable finance. Renovating a house, creating additional rooms, installing sanitation facilities or improving water and electricity infrastructure can be beyond the means of many families. Banks and financial institutions therefore have a crucial role to play. The renewed policy will achieve its intended purpose only if financing is accessible, transparent and simple for ordinary households.
The introduction of the Bed & Breakfast model is another welcome step. Allowing secondary residential properties to be registered for tourist accommodation can bring vacant and underutilised houses into the tourism economy. It can simultaneously increase accommodation capacity without encouraging large-scale construction in ecologically sensitive areas.
However, expansion must not come at the cost of regulation. The government will have to maintain strict standards relating to safety, hygiene, waste disposal, fire protection and structural suitability. A homestay should not become a licence for unregulated commercial activity in residential areas.
There is also a larger question of geographical balance. If homestays are concentrated only around already popular destinations, the basic objective of the policy will be defeated. Incentives, promotion and infrastructure support should therefore favour genuinely unexplored and economically weaker areas.
J&K’s tourism future cannot depend entirely on adding more hotels to already crowded destinations. It must increasingly be about taking tourism to communities and allowing communities to benefit directly from it.
The renewed Homestay Policy can become an important instrument in achieving precisely that. If implemented with transparency, financial support, professional training and effective monitoring, it can transform ordinary homes into gateways to rural Kashmir and Jammu—while transforming local residents from spectators of tourism into its principal stakeholders. That would be a more inclusive tourism model, and perhaps a more sustainable one too.
