JAMMU, Dec 14:Hotel & Restaurant Association,Katra today convened a meeting of the Tourism stake holders of J&K State in which Secretary Tourism J&K Govt. Farooq A.Shah was Chief Guest and Director Tourism Kashmir Mehmood Shah and Special Secretary Tourism M.H.Mir were guest of honour,and in this meeting besides the members of the association,the representatives of the leading Tour & Travel bodies of the state,leading travel agents of Katra and the Tourism delegates from the whole state participated.
While speaking on the occasion Rakesh Wazir and Shyam Lal Kesar from Hotel fraternity emphasised that the time has come when government instead of beating about the bushes and realising the reality regarding Katra to be a main tourism feeding point for whole state enabling 80% of the tourists, a chunk of more than one crore visiting overhere, instead of its being diverted to the nearby Himachal Pardesh & other states be by all means channelized to the tourist places of our own state and therefor suggested certain measures such as making of Katra as model town showcasing it as the base feeding camp for the whole tourist destinations of the state,making of vast publicity of tourist places of the state at Katra in Hotels,at the Railway Station,Travel agents offices,LEDs, and by other means by way of showing their charming attractive beautiful pictures etc.and by providing good connectivity to all Tourist places of the state from the base camp Katra besides good co-ordination of Tourism related people of whole state.
They further demanded immediate sanction of long term and short term tourism related projects/measures to achieve this purpose including way side facilities from Katra to Banganga,beautiful lightening at Railway Road,Sign Boards etc. as short term term measures and Light and sound at Katra,developing tourist places around Katra as long term measures.
Mr. Farooq A Shah listened all the tourism fraternity people patiently and assured them that every effort would to made to make Katra the real feeding point viz-a viz base camp to full fil the desires of the government for the maximum tourism promotions in Jammu as well as in Kashmir and Ladakh region of the state and insisted for the full co-operation of Tourism stake holders at Katra and assured all, that they will get full co operation from tourism side.He announced the implementation of above short term measures within 45 days and long term projects in phased manner within next 4 years.
Mr.Mehmood Shah Direcotr Tourism Kashmir invited the Tourism related people from Katra on a tour to Kashmir including Gulmarg,Pahalgam,Srinagar,Sonamarg etc.and offered himself to be the co-ordinator between Kashmir & Katra.
The meeting among others was attended by Dy.Director Tourism Sushil Atri,Dy.General Manager JKTDC Ashwani Gupta,Tourism Asstt.Directors Ashima Sher,Dr.Umesh Shan, Founder Chairman Tourism Promotion Council V.K.Sehgal, Kashmir Travel Trade associated headed by Chairman PILTOP, Nasir Shah, Chairman AKTO, Nazir Mir, Chairman, DTOAK, Haji Hamid Wangnoo, Senior Vice Chairman, KHARA, Dr. Majid, Publicity Secretary HBOA, Manzoor Ahmed Kaloo, Secretary JKTA, Ashok Koul, representative of TAAT,Kuldeep Dubey,Shiv Kumar Sharma,Virender Kesar, Sardari Lal Dubey,Amit Sharma,Ajay Kotwal,Vivek Sharma,Sonu Kohli,Vijay Ganjoo etc.
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