Issue Details

TOURISM IN KASHMIR REGION: A GEOGRAPHIC STUDY

ABSTRACT

"With travel being more popular than ever, why should destination managers be concerned?" This was the query posed by Stanley Plog forty years ago while delivering a paper to Southern California. The solution, as Plog himself stated, is "because their location’s attractiveness may be spinning away even as they watch." Plog’s point was that the tourism business is self-destructive because "the seeds of the destination’s almost-inevitable decline are already sown in the midst of its success." As a result, "a number of tourist destinations have experienced a cycle of intense building activity and capital investment, witnessed a tourist boom, hit a heyday, and then began to decline." To minimise eventual deterioration, appropriate planning and administration are required (Tewari, 1994)." The inevitable collapse of practically all tourist locations around the world is a harsh reality. In fact, the more popular a location, the faster its lustre fades, and the more vulnerable a recreational area’s ecological, the more it suffers from mismanaged tourism development. When a region begins exploring and utilising its natural or cultural assets and opens its womb to the outside world, few comprehend that this very reason, which attracts others, may suffer and degenerate, leaving them without a means of subsistence. The stakeholders, who at first represent local hobbyists, evolve throughout time. As more benefits are expected from tourists, the engagement of external components grows, and the resident population becomes marginalised. These wealthy outsiders provide larger hotels, restaurants, service centres, and other tourist necessities. Such people have no regard for the ecology and the environment, thus they exploit the resources as much as possible in order to reap as many benefits as possible in as little time as possible. In order to satisfy their avarice, they chopped the very roots of the economy for the local population, who could have utilised their resources more wisely and symbiotically.

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