Over  the  last  two  to  three  decades,  tourism  in  Kashmir  has grown significantly,  but  much  of  its  development  potential  remains  untapped  and unrealized.  This industry’s growth in the state has been limited and unsatisfactory due to a range of challenges and obstacles.  Kashmir’s  tourist  industry  has  been  hampered  by  a  lack  of  suitable transportation  and  road  infrastructure. Insufficient capacity, lack of devoted and  experienced professionals, security and harassment problems fuel surcharges, faulty flight  planning,  and  inadequate  infrastructure,  such  as  substandard  roads,  filthy facilities, communication  issues,  etc.,  all  contribute  to  rising  travel  costs.  Security  and  safety  breaches, trespassing by  travellers  and other forms of varied issues  are all  too  common.  Growth of  village tourism,  a  lack  of understanding of  the sorts of visitors,  guides who  aren’t well qualified etc. are  all examples of uneven development.

ISSUES AND CHALLENGES FACED BY THE TOURISM INDUSTRY OF KASHMIR

         Even with so much of potential and vast variety of tourism resources Kashmir is facing many challenges and issues as a tourist destination. Having so much to offer for tourism there are number of destinations that are still untouched, unexplored and unknown to world. The Kashmir has a potential of becoming the best niche tourism market as unlike other destinations as it has a huge range of offerings from adventure, leisure, religion to entertainment etc.

Lack Of Infrastructure

        The travel and tourism industry across the world suffers from poor infrastructure. And Kashmir has no different scenario. The infrastructure includes overall facilities provided by the stakeholders. Kashmir faces range of infrastructural issues from just having one airport (which is not technically sophisticated) to no rail connectivity with other states. The road accessibility to most of tourist spots of the valley remains affected during winters which definitely leaves an image of disgust on visitors mind. Not only tourist arrival is hampered but tourism stakeholders find it difficult to provide the amenities at particular destination because of poor accessibility. Kashmir ranks very low in number of branded hotels in fact there is no star categorised hotel which is again challenging issue as most of high end tourist won’t prefer to visit. The most of hotels and houseboats don’t have STP’s (sewage treatment plants) and even the quality of services is not meeting the standards.

         Lack of Professionalism: Tourism being the service sector requires lot professionalism as the quality of service is largely dependent on how professionally services are offered. The travel and tourism sector includes tour operators, hotel employees, guides and escorts and other people involved in carrying out tourism operations. As per the reports of Ministry of Tourism only 50% of the employees in functional operations of hotels are fully trained and surprisingly the figure further reduces to 35% when it comes to restaurants and food outlets. The lack of professionalism in the service offering of the tourism sector leaves a negative vibe in the mind of tourists and they may prefer not to visit again therefore giving a challenge to the marketing of tourism. The students graduating from the only Hotel Management institution running in the state look for career opportunities outside the state. Even due to less developed hospitality sector the valley also reasonably fails to produce the professionals.

         Poor telecommunication network: Since most of tourist destinations in Kashmir are in remote interiors and yet there is no mobile phone networking which is again challenging for tourism industry in present day world. Even today in some of prime destinations like Sonamarg, Apharward, Doodhpathri etc there is no telecommunication which adds to the drawback of destination.

         Less sophisticated TIC/TRC (tourist information/reception centres): The tourist information/ reception (TRC) centres that are technically sound and with proper information are prerequisite of tourist spots. Being politically disturbed area there is much more need for sophisticated tourist information or tourist reception centres. It has been seen there is absence of an updated information systems with quick retrieval facilities at TIC/TRC in Kashmir causing inconvenience to tourists.

         Weak communication skills: No matter how high end tourist may come but for some basic services like guides, escort, pony etc they have to rely on the local intimates of destination only and due to lack of communication skills services get affected. As most of local workers are not familiar with non local languages and their services doesn’t meet the expected standard of the tourist that adds to the challenges faced by tourism industry

Political Instability

         Travel and tourism sector in Kashmir has been the victim of political disturbances since early 90’s. Tourism of Kashmir faced a failure during devastating floods of 2014. The political disturbances have put a huge setback for tourism in Kashmir. Tourism is an activity that needs peace and without peace the tourism is impossible. This is the one of key issues that tourism sector of Kashmir is facing.

         Loopholes in the safety and security of the tourist: Maslow hierarchy of need rates security and safety at no. 2 after physiological needs. This is level of significance that the security or safety of the person holds. Even if the potential of India and the Kashmir in tourism industry is high but unfortunately security of tourist has been one of the major concern for tourism industry. Indeed nothing works if the tourists face security concerns. The state of JK has been the 1st Indian state to introduce concept of tourist. Political stability is of major importance to any investment but holds more significance to tourism because of what is being sold: serenity, fun, leisure, comfort and these can be successfully marketed only under peace and stable situation. Tourist arrivals act as a barometer of the safe and secure image of a state.

Seasonality

         Despite being one of most beautiful and attractive tourist spot most of the destinations in Kashmir have failed to be round the year tourist destination. The trend here has been in summers prime destinations are Mughal gardens, Sonamarg and pahalgam while most the tourists prefer Gulmarg in winters. The DOT (directorate of tourism) Kashmir is facing big challenge to make Kashmir round the year tourist destination. The poor infrastructure to a large extent is responsible for making Kashmir a seasonal tourist destination. The seasonality has two major outcomes that create a challenge for tourism in Kashmir.

       High employee turnover: the tourism business are unable to provide round the year salary to their employees as during some part of a year they don’t earn a penny and that forces employees to switch from their workplace, which puts the industry in challenging position.

       Over charging of amenities: since the industry is working in seasonal phase, the tour operators, travel agents, local service providers, hoteliers etc most of the time over charge the guest in order to compensate the expenses during the slack season. The tourist has to pay more for the services that are provided at much lower costs at other places.

Environmental Issues

• Increased air pollution
• Land degradation.
• Exploitation of resources
• Loss of biological diversity
• Water pollution primarily because of no STP’S (sewage treatment plants) in hotels.

Media Prejudice

         The national and local media plays a crucial role in tourism boosting and in Kashmir media is reasonably biased when it comes to updating the ground reality of overall situation in Kashmir. As media being on negative lines, it has resulted in downfall in arrivals of tourist in recent past. Media reports about Kashmir have added to negative marketing of the region which has become a big challenge for tourism industry to overcome.

More Private Invesestments

         Private sector plays a major role in any sort of developments. The tourism spots of Kashmir have rich potential for different forms of tourism. Therefore initiatives must be taken to attract private entrepreneurs towards development of tourism industry. Ministry of tourism must provide attracting schemes for emerging entrepreneurs with good scope for their investments and also initiatives of PPP (public private partnerships) must be given due consideration like all other developed tourist destinations do. E.g. Indira Gandhi International airport spread across an area of 4 sq km, the Brownfield IGI airport project was undertaken jointly by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and infrastructure company GMR group in a PPP (Public-Private Partnership) mode. The airport caters large number of tourists with world class standards.