India

Winter season induce tourist inflow to Kashmir

Arrival of winter in Kashmir helped the tourism sector valley, as most of the hotels and guest houses in Kashmir’s Gulmarg and Jammu’s Patnitop are full, as tourists from across the country have been flocking to enjoy the cold weather and snow.

“Today both Gulmarg and Patnitop are witnessing 100 per cent occupancy. Over 1500 rooms of hotels, guest houses and government huts are occupied in the famous ski resort Gulmarg,” said Rigzin Samphel, Tourism Secretary, to the media on Sunday.

“The Patnitop hills and its adjacent resorts are also chock-full with local visitors as well as from north India to enjoy snow here,” said Sampel.

He claimed that the rush in the tourism sites was the result of planned promotional campaign initiated by the tourism department.

“We conducted a massive campaign to promote winter tourism in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Gulmarg, Pahalgham, Patnitop and Bhadarwah have been promoted as premier products for winters at various national and international level travel and tourism fairs,” added Sampel.

He said the department also promoted Chadar trek in Leh and Kargil and since last two months the department has carried out intensive promotions on social media and the national and regional newspapers about winter tourism in Jammu and Kashmir, which ultimately produced positive results.

“We are also receiving good number of adventure enthusiasts for adventure tourism in Ladkah and we have been promoting Chadar trek vigorously which receives travellers across the globe,” he said.

He further added that overwhelming arrivals of tourist would be a big boost to the local economy and the industry is hopeful that this year’s winter season would be among the best in the last many years.