Incessant rainfall causes hindrance to Himachal Tourism

MANALI - Incessant rainfall over the past two months has resulted in the decline of tourists visiting Manali, which has left an adverse impact on the tourism and hospitality sectors here.

A senior official of the Kullu district administration on Friday said the persistent rainfall over the past few months has resulted in less number of tourists visiting the hilly State.

It has been reported that the transport operators here are also badly hit due to decline in the flow of tourists.

The large, medium and budget hotels, which number around 1500 in Manali region alone, have not seen a single tourist visiting their hotels over the past two months.

“We are visiting now north India, and we have been travelling Manali and Spiti Valley there was some snow and rainfall. So our Spiti Valley trip had to change and we were planning before hand to go to Leh,” said Zohar Kaplan, a tourist from Israel.

Reportedly, apart from Manali, many other regions of Himachal Pradesh have faced similar downtrends in tourism sector, the peak season of which usually starts around April and ends by September.

“From the past two months Himachal Pradesh is facing rainfall, because of which the routes of the valley are getting blocked. Due to the rainfall in the hills, the trekkers can’t go on trekking because of which the entire region of Kullu is facing less inflow of tourists and the hotels are almost lying vacant for the past two months,” said B M Nanat, Deputy Commissioner, Kullu.

Routes to various areas have been blocked due to massive landslides, and tourists can only hope for the rainfall to stop before they can go for trekking once again. By Prem Thakur (ANI)