Kashmir valley has been facing a unique infrastructural crisis in the last two tourist seasons. The tourist influx is growing. However the tourism infrastructure cannot handle the tourists arriving in scenic valley as there just aren’t enough hotels to accommodate this influx.

Compared to 10.02 million tourists in 2010, the officials at Tourism Department say that 12.24 million tourists visited J&K in 2011. The major improvement was the number of foreigners which gradually swelled from 46,000 in 2010 to 68,000 in 2011. In 2012, the record was broken again when the number of tourists touched almost 14 lakh, with 12,75000 domestic and the rest foreigners, making it the most successful year in the tourism history of the state. According to official estimates, four to five thousand tourists arrive every day in Kashmir, a number which could double during the pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Amarnath as per a report in Firstpost.

As the situation started improving, an aggressive campaign by the state government in consultation with the union tourism ministry not only assured the return of tourists but also of Bollywood.

“The existing occupancy in Srinagar is eighty percent, but in hill stations like Gulmarg, Sonmarg and Pahalgam, it is almost full,” Talat Parveez, Director of Jammu and Kashmir’s Tourism department, told Firstpost. Despite a 30-day strike and curfew after Mohammad Afzal Guru was hanged on 9 February inside Tihar Jail in Delhi this year, the Tourism Department remains optimistic. “More records will be broken this year,” Talat Parveez says.

But most of the tourists complain about not finding right accommodation for the prices that they would pay in other tourist destinations. With management of the largely privatised hotel industry being beyond the government’s control, prices are skyrocketing. Now even budget hotels have started doubling their rates. Flight costs have also tripled.

“Going to Singapore and finding a budget hotel is easier than in Kashmir. It would take same amount to travel to South East Asia as it does from Delhi to Kashmir,” Akash Soni, a businessman from Mumbai who arrived in Kashmir on June 14 told Firstpost.

The problem is more than two decades of violent conflict in Kashmir Valley have crippled the infrastructure as very few tourists came to the Valley at that time when foreign embassies in New Delhi were issuing travel advisories to their citizens against travelling to Kashmir after the killing of the five foreign tourists.

The scarcity of rooms is felt more acutely in smaller towns like Gulmarg, which was accorded the best ‘All Seasons Destination of the World’ last year by Pacific Asia Travel Writers Association (PATWA) at ITB Berlin, the world’s leading travel trade show. This famous ski resort has a capacity of around 1400 rooms while more than ten thousand people visit Gulmarg everyday at the peak of tourism season.

Pahalgam, another famous holiday resort in South Kashmir, also a route for the annual Amarnath pilgrimage, has more than fifteen hundred rooms but the hotels can’t accommodate millions of pilgrims who stay on the banks in tents.

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