Tourism department would aggressively market J&K as a top tourist destination in the upcoming travel marts and road shows to be held within and outside the country, director tourism, Kashmir, Tasaduq Jeelani has said.
Jeelani said this while addressing a a meeting with the heads of the local associations of tour operators, houseboat owners and hoteliers here at TRC, Srinagar, according to a spokesperson of the department.
The department convened the meeting to prepare the local stakeholders for the promotional campaigns to attract tourists for autumn and winter seasons.
During the meeting, Tasaduq Jeelani informed the travel trade that the tourist influx from the countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Bangladesh, has increased over the past few years and the department would make every possible attempt to further increase tourist footfall from these emerging markets.
“It is encouraging that the foreign tourist flow to Kashmir and Ladakh has increased from these countries where we would go and show our presence in the travel marts. We will visit these places and project J&K as the one of the best and safe tourist attractions and convince the travellers there to visit J&K,” he said.
He said the department is also planning to participate in the travel shows at Surat, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Kolkata to tap the domestic market.
In order to offset the “negative perception” among the visitors about Kashmir, Tasaduq Jeelani said the department is planning to organise a grand ‘Kashmir Festival’ in which media persons of regional print and electronic media houses from different states would be invited and apprised about local tourism products.
He also said that during the travel trade fairs and road shows at different places, the department would also rope in media for the publication of the positive stories from J&K.
On the occasion, the representatives from various travel, hotel and houseboat associations put forward their suggestions including designing Kashmir theme based pavilion at travel marts, organising more road shows, promoting tourism through flash mobs in shopping malls at weekends for greater visibility of the J&K as a culturally rich tourist destination.
Director tourism appreciated their ideas and suggestions and said both the department and the trade would as a unit promote Kashmir tourism.