Director Tourism Kashmir Tasaduq Jeelani today said that department of tourism Kashmir would aggressively market J&K state as a top tourist destination in the upcoming travel marts and road shows to be held within and outside the Country.The Directors stated this during a meeting with the heads of the local Associations of tour operators, houseboat owners and hoteliers here at TRC Srinagar.The meeting was convened by the Department 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 representatives that the tourist influx from the countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Bangladesh, has increased over the past few years and the trend needs to be capitalised by further promoting Kashmir in these countries. “It is encouraging that the foreign tourist flow to Kashmir and Ladakh from these countries has increased. We will visit these places and project J&K as one of the best and safe tourist attractions and convince more travellers from these places 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 from 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 promoting 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, organizing more road shows, promoting tourism through flash mobs in shopping malls at weekends for greater visibility of the J&K state as a culturally rich tourist destination.Director Tourism Kashmir appreciated their ideas and suggestions and said both the department and the trade bodies would work as a unit to promote Kashmir tourism.Deputy Director Registration Waseem Raja, Deputy Director Publicity Riyaz Ahmad Shah, Deputy Director Kashmir Massarat Hashim, Deputy Director Recreation Mohammad Sarfaraz, SP Enforcement Amarjit Singh, the assistant directors and In-charges of various tourism destinations were also present in the meeting.