“They would break the crockery that would cost much more than their wages,” Imitiaz said, “The brief training course they have at the local hotel management institute is too inadequate to train them how to serve.”
For Imtiaz, it is not only how fast the servicemen would respond to a customer who is seeking breakfast before leaving for the airport. “It is how you change the ashtray in his room while he is smoking or how coolly you are able to communicate that this dish may take some time,” he says. “After all the guest seeks a definite mannerism for what he pays for staying in a room.” But that is not the only factor. Right now most of the hotel kitchens are stuffed with non-local cooks. Not because they work on less wages, but simply because they know how to cook. Almost two-third of the tourist arrivals are from the Indian plains, mostly Maharashtra and Gujarat and ninety percent of them are vegetarians.
“I would have been happy to hire locals but they do not know the art of vegetarian cuisine,” says G M Dug who runs two hotels in Srinagar. “Kashmiri chefs know only Wazwaan and for them the most difficult preparation is the vegetarian one and in certain cases some of the vegetarian chefs even use mutton stock in it which sometimes could be a crisis.”
Many tourists do not actually trust their travel agents on food. So they get the food and the cooks along. “We do get groups that takeover the kitchen till they leave and it is because of the peculiar vegetarian food habit that they have,” said a hotelier, Azim Mohammad. “This practice is acceptable because this is part of the budget tourist and it happens everywhere.”
A manager of a five star hotel said, though they have separate kitchens for veg and non-veg and do not face a problem as the sector might be facing, they also hire around 40 percent of their tariff from outside. “For us budget is not an issue, the talent and availability is,” the manager, who is not authorised to speak to media, said. “One of the five stars could trace a good chef and he is there but you cannot run a five star with one chef.” For a place with high unemployment rates, this trend could create a crisis if the policymakers do not intervene and get better training systems takeover the market.
Driving Directly
This has been a major demand of the local transport sector. If tourists are driving in huge commercial buses, the trade argues, they should either pay to move places within the state – as is happening in other states or simply permit the local transport sector to takeover. “I have been busy all these months,” Ahfaq Ahmad, an auto driver from Gojwara who works around Dalgate area said. “Given the rush I thought I would purchase another auto but that I could not.” Most taxi drivers also remained busy with the tourists this season. But the tourists they catered to were the ones whot had flown in and not those who drove up in their own vehicles.
Insiders of the tourist trade say, if the government does not work to let the benefit trickle down to the transport sector, it should not permit the inter-state movement of commercial traffic free. It has many problems, explains Ghulam Mohammad, an experienced transporter. The revenue that could have come by levying certain duties could help improve the municipal affairs. “Offering everything free is impacting the brand because it gives an impression of cheap destination which might be beneficial to swell the backpacker numbers but prevents the high-spending tourist from coming in,” believes Ghulam Mohammad.
Officials argue that offering such concessions were important because it helps in revival of the sector. Once it stabilises, they say, the normal systems and levies will take over. Interestingly, in Leh, for instance, no tourist can drive in his own vehicle.
Uneven Dispersal
For ages, Mughal gardens, Gulmarg and Pahalgam were the main bread and butter for Kashmir tourism. During the last few years, a lot of public investment has gone into various other areas that offer alternatives. Some basic infrastructure is available at these newer spots like Yousmarg, Dudhpathri, and southern spots of Kokernag, Verinag, Achabal and Ahrabal. But what was obvious in the tourist priorities was that they could not come out of the Gulmarg-Pahalgam-Sonamarg-Srinagar circuit. This led to massive overcrowding of all these places as they were overflowing their carrying capacity. Policy makers in the government should have sanitised the travel trade and suggested them to include the new destinations-
