Tourism In Jammu And Kashmir Pays The Price Of Pahalgam Terror Attack

Before the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Salamabad—a crossing point on the Line of Control (LoC) between India and Pakistan in North Kashmir’s Uri—was an unusual but popular tourist destination. Tourists would come to the Kaman Post—a point where a bridge connects the two countries—from where they could see the neighbouring country as well as people on the other side of the border going about their day.

It was a thrilling experience. Salamabad also served as a point from where one could go to the Bangus Valley—a popular tourist destination in North Kashmir’s Kupwara district—and other trekking destinations.

Rewind a couple of years, Salamabad was thriving. The weekly cross-LoC bus—also called Karwan-e-Aman or peace bus between India and Pakistan—plied between Uri and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Both sides constructed Trade Facilitation Centres (TFC) around five km inside the LoC. The TFC in Uri was located in Salamabad. There was a free flow of people and trade until the 2019 Pulwama attack.

The TFC building in Salamabad has stood deserted since then—a grim reminder of the time when people could move freely and also open small businesses made possible due to the free movement of goods. Now, the entire town is deserted. Intense shelling from the Pakistani side in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor has taken away the hustle and bustle of the border towns of Uri and Salamabad and triggered large-scale migration. Several houses and commercial properties have been damaged. The shelling has now stopped, but it has also led to the restriction of movement of people. Security forces are not allowing non-locals to go to Salamabad.

Bearing the brunt of the changed situation are locals who were dependent on the incoming tourists. It is impacting their business, they said. “Before the border skirmishes, there used to be a heavy rush of tourists to the Kaman Post from where you could see Pakistan and people moving around. Now, no one comes here,” says Mohammad Anwar Shiekh, 45, a resident of Uri.

In the neighbouring district of Kupwara, even local Kashmiris are not able to travel to some of the popular tourist destinations. Several permissions are required, including those from the local administration and police, to go to locations like the Bangus Valley. “The number of tourists visiting Baramulla and Uri has come down sharply. We have lost nearly 70 per cent of the business after the border skirmishes,” says Fahad Gayas, who runs a hotel in Baramulla.

Not only at locations along the LoC, the tourist numbers have come down to trickle across Kashmir after the Pahalgam terror attack. According to official figures, more than 3.5 million tourists visited Kashmir in 2024, and 23.5 million tourists came to the region of Jammu and Kashmir as a whole. This year, the figures had been expected to rise even higher. But that has changed now.

It has been a month since the terror attack in Pahalgam. Travel agents, who had been looking forward to a peak summer tourism season, experienced nearly 100 per cent cancellations. Now, with the ceasefire in place, tour operators report that only five to ten per cent of tourists have returned to the Valley. They are hoping that the situation will improve by winter.

On May 26, several businessmen in the tourism sector, who were part of a delegation from the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce & Industry (KCCI), met with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and urged him to reopen tourist places. “We called on the CM and urged him to open the places that are closed for tourists. He said that these sites are closed for security reasons and he has raised the matter with the Home Ministry,” a KCCI member, who was part of the delegation, said.

A government spokesperson later said that the chief minister, while recognising the severe impact on the tourism sector after the Pahalgam terror attack, assured that “restrictions on tourists to travel to 48 destinations need to be reviewed gradually.” On May 27, after his cabinet meeting in Pahalgam, the chief minister said: “The process of reopening will begin in a phased manner in the coming days. Not all destinations will reopen at once, but some will gradually become accessible.”

According to several people associated with the tourism trade, the restrictions at the 48 destinations have further impacted their business. “There are several tourist areas in Kupwara that have been restricted for tourists. The government should lift the restrictions to ensure that tourism picks up again,” said Yasir Javid, a travel agent in North Kashmir’s Kupwara.

Farooq Kuthoo, who runs a travel agency in Kashmir, said that after the Pahalgam attack, tourism in Kashmir has been severely impacted. “We have now offered heavy discounts to people, to the extent of 50 per cent, on hotel accommodations to ensure that tourism revives again in Kashmir,” he added.

KCCI President Javed Ahmad Tenga said: “The hotel occupancy has now heavily reduced and remains nearly zero in several places. Tourist numbers have come down to a trickle.”

Yasir said that he has made only a few bookings of tourists from South India recently, and prospects of tourism revival will depend on how the Amarnath yatra fares. “If the Amarnath yatra goes incident-free, then we will have a very good season of tourists. For leisure tourism, yatra is more or less like an off-season. But after the yatra concludes, from October till February, we could have a very good autumn and winter tourism,” he said.

Tenga said that the tourism industry in Kashmir employs over 2.5 lakh people who are staring at a loss of jobs for a long period in view of a drop in hotel occupancy. He also added that due to the losses suffered in the tourism sector, they have urged the chief minister to ensure an interest moratorium on loans and relaxation in the Non- Performing Asset (NPAs) norms for delayed payments.

The KCCI has urged the government to provide interest subvention on all business loans, offer a moratorium on loan repayments, besides “waiver of transport-related taxes on passenger and commercial vehicles.” The KCCI also sought “Special Leave Travel Concession (LTC) incentives for government employees across India to encourage travel to Kashmir.”

On May 27, when the chief minister was in Pahalgam for the cabinet meeting, he posted on his social media handle: “We came to express solidarity with the local population. We’ve also come to thank all the tourists who are also slowly making their way back to Kashmir and to Pahalgam.” While the administration is making all the efforts to revive tourism in Kashmir, the numbers will show if tourists are actually confident about adding Jammu and Kashmir to their tourism bucket list again.