International tourist inquiries to J&K see a 20% drop, following Pahalgam attack

Some travel platforms are seeing drop in inquiries by foreign travellers planning to visit Kashmir.

Foreign travellers cautious

Foreign travellers have shown a cautious response when it comes to Kashmir and many potential visitors are holding off on their bookings until conditions stabilise, he added.

Arora added that travellers from several western countries are showing more caution right now.

"For instance, clients from the UK, Germany, and France have mentioned that they’re rethinking their itineraries, as these markets tend to be very proactive when safety concerns emerge. We’re also noticing that some from Australia and Canada are taking a wait-and-see approach, preferring to monitor the situation before locking in any travel dates," he said.

In the first three months of 2025, over half a million tourists had already visited Jammu & Kashmir, after the total tourist footfall in 2024 was approximately 2.95 million -- a notable rise from 2.71 million visitors in 2023 and 2.67 million in 2022 -- the senior executive from the visa-processing firm cited above said.

Comparing the current situation to the Pulwama terror attack of 2019 when 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed, executives said that both domestic and international travel agents are expected to avoid Kashmir as a holiday destination in 2025 until there is clear signs of truce between India and Pakistan, similar to the circumstances witnessed in 2019.

Tourism in J&K saw a significant dip in 2019 after the Pulwama attacks and the abrogation of Article 370. According to official data by the ministry of tourism, average monthly tourists arrivals to J&K fell to around 7,000 - 8,000 in 2019 from around 30,000 in 2018. A similar dip in tourist footfalls can be expected in 2025, if military tensions continue.

80% tourist bookings cancelled

According to the Kashmir Hotel Association (KHA), 80 percent of tourist bookings to Kashmir have been cancelled in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack.

"There have been 80 percent cancellations in bookings. We can understand. It is justified and natural, given what happened," Mushtaq Chaya, chairman, KHA, said on April 26.

Domestic airlines in India had, by April 23, received requests to reschedule or cancel around 15,000 flight tickets to Srinagar since terrorists struck at a prime tourist spot in Pahalgam in south Kashmir on April 22, 2025, killing at least 26 people, mostly tourists, and injuring several others, data shared with Moneycontrol by online travel portals and domestic airlines showed.

Another executive from a second visa-processing firm said that if military tensions in Kashmir rise, a situation similar to Israel could be seen in Kashmir as well. He added that even before the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, foreign travellers going to Israel had started to see a dip. It fell 85 percent in the next four months.

"A similar dip in bookings to Kashmir should be expected, if there is military retaliation between India and Pakistan along the Kashmir LoC (Line of Control)," the executive said.

According to news agency ANI, Pakistan initiated small arms firing across LoC again on April 27 and April 28. This is the fourth night when such firings have been initiated by the Pakistan Army.

The rising tensions between India and Pakistan and the closure of the latter's airspace for India is affecting Indian airlines like IndiGo and is disrupting overall international travel.

Longer flight duration

"Due to the closure of the Pakistan air space for Indigo, a two-hour flight is now taking six hours and it becomes unviable for them. This is a big downer for people flying to countries like Tashkent, Kazakhstan. A lot of people had planned their summer holidays to these destinations because they are cost-effective," said travel agent Sanjay Dang, managing director of Le Travelworld.

Some countries, like the US, Canada and the UK, have already issued advisories to its citizens planning to travel to India as tensions rise between the two south Asian countries. The US, on April 24, issued a ‘Do Not Travel’ advisory for Jammu and Kashmir owing to the terror attacks and 'possible violent civilian unrest' in the Union Territory and also within 10 km of the India-Pakistan border.

The UK, on April 25, and Canada, on April 27, issued similar warnings, urging their citizens to avoid travel within 10 km of the India-Pakistan border.

Right messaging is the key in the current situation, said Ajay Prakash, Vice Chairman, Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism & Hospitality (FAITH).

"While we, as tour operators, are in constant touch with our overseas colleagues and are keeping them updated, there has to be a clear communication from government agencies advising the world, especially key source markets, about the safety of tourists in India."

Tourism accounts for 8% of J&K's GDP

Kashmir’s tourism sector accounts for at least 8 percent of the Union Territory’s GDP. As per the Jammu and Kashmir economic survey of 2024-25, the region’s GSDP (Gross State Domestic Product) had grown 7.06 percent in 2024-25 and 7.08 percent in 2023-24.

Earlier this year, J&K's first chief minister since it became a UT, Omar Abdullah, said that his government’s goal was to “increase tourism’s contribution to the GSDP from 7 percent to at least 15 percent over the next four to five years.”

The UT government had even come out with a comprehensive tourism policy in 2020, which aimed at generating employment for approximately 50,000 people each year and attracting an average investment target of Rs 2,000 crore per year for the next five years.

Kashmir’s tourism ecosystem is large and diverse, with more than 1,000 houseboats, over 4,000 hotels, and many taxi drivers, tour guides, pony ride operators, and handicraft sellers, all of whom mostly rely on domestic visitors. Many had invested in the sector believing in the promise of a good season.

According to a survey conducted by LocalCircles released last week, six out of 10 families with travel plans to the Kashmir Valley this year have decided to cancel their bookings following the attack. The survey also revealed that among 6,807 respondents who had planned trips to Kashmir between May and December this year, 62 percent have already decided to cancel their vacations.

Khalid Baba, a houseboat owner based out of Srinagar, had, in September 2021, told Moneycontrol that a foreign couple would spend Rs 4-5 lakh and stay on the houseboat for a week. They would also get the houseboat owners to arrange visits to nearby destinations, which would help keep others in the family employed as well.