Bringing in tourists

Pakistan is to host the 2020 summit of the World Tourism Forum. A thousand people from overseas are expected to attend. Certainly, under recent policies advocating Pakistan’s promotion as a tourism centre, visits to the country as well as domestic travel have grown. In 2015, 563,000 foreigners visited Pakistan. By 2018, this figure had climbed to 1.9 million. This is a massive achievement. Tourism has immense potential to bring in revenue, create jobs and also build the image of a country. Pakistan requires all of these.

But there is a need to exercise some caution. PM Imran Khan on Friday said in Islamabad that eight coastal areas would be developed as resorts along the pristine Balochistan coast. The beaches of Balochistan, which match any in the world, would certainly attract tourists. We wonder however about the violence. In April last year near Gwadar, 14 persons, most of them naval officers, were pulled off buses and killed in a carefully planned and cold-blooded attack. A month later, gunmen stormed the Pearl Continental hotel in Gwadar, killing five after a prolonged shootout. This is obviously not encouraging. Any incident involving security would steer tourists away from Pakistan.

Beyond the issue of security, especially in restive Balochistan, we need more roads, infrastructure and amenities. Domestic tourists last Eid reported traffic jams lasting hours or even days en route to destinations in the Kaghan Valley, Swat or the Murree hill tracts. No one wants to spend most of their holiday in a car, and the complaint by the people of Swat that crucial roads damaged in the 2010 floods are still to be repaired raises further questions about our infrastructure. Then there is also the matter of hotels, efficient travel, and other basic amenities. In many cases, hotels are substandard, partially because they have not earned sufficient revenue over the years as tourism stumbled and collapsed. Into the 1970s of course, Pakistan was a tourist haven, especially for off-track tourists seeking peaceful nirvanas from where they could enjoy three of the highest mountain ranges in the world. We need to build tourism back in Pakistan. But it cannot happen at the press of a button or by a few words from the PM. To ensure there is no embarrassment and that domestic tourists are catered for as well as influencers from Western countries making their vlogs, a plan needs to be put in place so that in time, Pakistan can indeed become an attractive spot for tourists from around the world.