The government on Friday said the G-20 Tourism Working Group meet held in Srinagar earlier this week will boost tourism in Jammu and Kashmir and help in allaying any fears in the minds of future visitors.
In 2022, Jammu and Kashmir registered a record footfall of 1.88 crore domestic tourists, of which 26 lakh visited the Kashmir Valley. The number is expected to cross two crore this year, Union Tourism Secretary Arvind Singh said. Foreign tourist arrivals are also expected to grow, he added.
The senior official said that any place that hosted G-20 meet registered a jump in tourism. The successful organisation of the G-20 meet in Srinagar would also help in “allaying any fears” in the minds of visitors in future and dispel any unfavourable notions they might have had.
The third tourism working group meeting was held in Srinagar from May 22 to 24.
Under India’s G-20 Tourism Track, the Tourism Working Group is working on five inter-connected priority areas – green tourism, digitalisation, skills, tourism MSMEs and destination tourism. These priorities are key building blocks for accelerating the transition of the tourism sector and achieving the targets for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
In Srinagar, apart from the main conference, a side event on ‘Film Tourism for Economic Growth and Cultural Preservation’ was also organised focusing on strategies to promote film tourism. A draft ‘National Strategy on Film Tourism’ was also unveiled to provide a roadmap for harnessing the role of films in promoting tourist destinations during the Srinagar meet.
