Bhat Imran
Srinagar, Apr 06 : In the past three years the foreign tourist arrivals in Kashmir Valley have dipped by almost by 95.22 percent.
However, among the domestic tourist arrivals, the visitor entrance has increased nearly by 20 percent.
According to the official figures available with the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), in the past three years, the highest number of foreign tourist arrivals in Kashmir valley was recorded in the year 2019.
In the year 2019, at least 33,779 foreign tourists and 53,175,3 domestic tourists had visited Kashmir valley.
In the following year 2020, there had a drastic fall among both foreign and domestic tourist arrivals by more than 89 percent and 93 percent respectively.
The official figures reveal that in this fiscal, a total of 3897 foreign and 37,370 domestic tourists had visited the valley.
Likewise, in the previous fiscal 2021, the arrival of foreign tourist arrivals in the Valley had dipped almost by 95.22 percent, however, the domestic tourist arrivals had increased by nearly 20 percent.
In this year only 1615 foreign and 6,641,99 domestic tourists had arrived in Kashmir.
The figures further reveal that in the ongoing fiscal, a total of 1,614,93 domestic and 484 foreign tourists had arrived here upto February end.
This information was revealed by the Deputy Director of tourism and planning department in a reply to Right to Information (RTI) application filed by the activists M M Shuja.
Earlier, in 2019, the then Deputy Director of tourism and planning in a RTI had said that in the year 2016, at least 12,745,96 had arrived in Kashmir and in 2017 only 11,960,67 domestic visitors had arrived here.
In the year 2016, a total of 24,516 foreign tourist arrivals in the State was recorded; in 2017 the arrival of foreign tourists increased by 29 percent recording 31,697 tourist arrivals.
Similarly, in the year 2018 at least 78,517,3 domestic arrivals were recorded by the department.
Likewise, the number of foreign tourist arrival in the year 2018 was 31,413 visitors—(KNO)
