Kashmir tourism bears the brunt after tourist massacre and
India-Pakistan military strikes
[May 22, 2025] By
AIJAZ HUSSAIN
SRINAGAR, India (AP) — There are hardly any tourists in the scenic
Himalayan region of Kashmir. Most of the hotels and ornate pinewood
houseboats are empty. Resorts in the snowclad mountains have fallen
silent. Hundreds of cabs are parked and idle.
It’s the fallout of last month’s gun massacre that left 26 people,
mostly Hindu tourists, dead in Indian-controlled Kashmir followed by
tit-for-tat military strikes by India and Pakistan, bringing the
nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of their third war over the region.
“There might be some tourist arrivals, but it counts almost negligible.
It is almost a zero footfall right now,” said Yaseen Tuman, who operates
multiple houseboats in the region’s main city of Srinagar. “There is a
haunting silence now.”
Tens of thousands of panicked tourists left Kashmir within days after
the rare killings of tourists on April 22 at a picture-perfect meadow in
southern resort town of Pahalgam. Following the attack, authorities
temporarily closed dozens of tourist resorts in the region, adding to
fear and causing occupancy rates to plummet.
Graphic images, repeatedly circulated through TV channels and social
media, deepened panic and anger. India blamed Pakistan for supporting
the attackers, a charge Islamabad denied.
Those who had stayed put fled soon after tensions between India and
Pakistan spiked. As the two countries fired missiles and drones at each
other, the region witnessed mass cancellations of tourist bookings. New
Delhi and Islamabad reached a U.S.-mediated ceasefire on May 10 but
hardly any new bookings have come in, tour operators said.
Sheikh Bashir Ahmed, vice president of the Kashmir Hotel and Restaurant
Association, said at least 12,000 rooms in the region’s hundreds of
hotels and guesthouses were previously booked until June. Almost all
bookings have been cancelled, and tens of thousands of people associated
with hotels are without jobs, he said.
“It’s a huge loss.” Ahmed said.
The decline has had a ripple effect on the local economy. Handicrafts,
food stalls and taxi operators have lost most of their business.
Idyllic destinations, like the resort towns of Gulmarg and Pahalgam,
once a magnet for travelers, are eerily silent. Lines of colorful
hand-carved boats, known as shikaras, lie deserted, mostly anchored
still on Srinagar’s normally bustling Dal Lake. Tens of thousands of
daily wage workers have hardly any work.
“There used to be long lines of tourists waiting for boat rides. There
are none now,” said boatman Fayaz Ahmed.
Taxi driver Mohammed Irfan would take tourists for long drives to hill
stations and show them grand Mughal-era gardens. “Even a half day of
break was a luxury, and we would pray for it. Now, my taxi lies
standstill for almost two weeks,” he said.
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Rows of empty houseboats in Dal lake, one of the major tourist
destination seen from a mountain in Srinagar, Indian controlled
Kashmir, India, Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)
 In recent years, the tourism sector
grew substantially, making up about 7% of the region’s economy,
according to official figures. Omar Abdullah, Kashmir’s top elected
official, said before the attack on tourists that the government was
aiming to increase tourism's share of the economy to at least 15% in
the next four to five years.
Indian-controlled Kashmir was a top destination for visitors until
the armed rebellion against Indian rule began in 1989. Warfare laid
waste to the stunningly beautiful region, which is partly controlled
by Pakistan and claimed by both countries in its entirety.
As the conflict ground on, the tourism sector slowly revived but
occasional military skirmishes between India and Pakistan kept
visitors at bay.
But India vigorously pushed tourism after Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s government scrapped the disputed region’s semi-autonomy in
2019. Tensions have simmered, but the region has also drawn millions
of visitors amid a strange calm enforced by an intensified security
crackdown.
According to official data, close to 3 million tourists visited the
region in 2024, a rise from 2.71 million visitors in 2023 and 2.67
million in 2022. The massive influx prompted many locals to invest
in the sector, setting up family-run guesthouses, luxury hotels, and
transport companies in a region with few alternatives.
Tourists remained largely unfazed even as Modi’s administration has
governed Kashmir with an iron fist in recent years, claiming
militancy in the region was in check and a tourism influx was a sign
of normalcy returning.
The massacre shattered those claims. Experts say that the Modi
government’s optimism was largely misplaced and that the rising
tourism in the region of which it boasted was a fragile barometer of
normalcy. Last year, Abdullah, the region’s chief minister,
cautioned against such optimism.
Tuman, who is also a sixth-generation tour operator, said he was not
too optimistic about an immediate revival as bookings for the summer
were almost all canceled.
“If all goes well, it will take at least six months for tourism to
revive,” he said.
Ahmed, the hotels association official, said India and Pakistan need
to resolve the dispute for the region’s prosperity. “Tourism needs
peace. If (Kashmir) problem is not solved … maybe after two months,
it will be again same thing.”
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