Minister for Tourism, Ghulam Ahmad Mir said the steep airfares were affecting the tourist flow to Kashmir as travel packages of this place become costlier than those offered by many European countries.

Mir said to overcome this problem, “the state government would ensure that airlines keep an upper cap beyond which they don’t hike the fares on Kashmir route during peak season.” “We have witnessed that during peak tourism season, Delhi-Srinagar or Srinagar-Delhi airfare goes as high as Rs 20,000 from each side.

In such situations, tourists prefer European and Middle East countries over Kashmir. So we have decided to meet the civil aviation ministry as well as the airliners to persuade them to keep airfares within a reasonable range,” Mir said during a media breifing at IATO 2013 convention in Kerala.