Factors affecting tourism, tourism potential and strategies for development as an Industry in Pakistan

Pakistan is a home of approximately 160 million people and most of the population is earning lessthan US$ 1 per day. Pakistan just like any other beautiful European country is a big market fortourism because it offers not only beauty of nature but also variety and diversity in cultures.Infacttourism is the most profitable and entrepreneurial business, especially for people living in the mountain areas as it creates new job opportunities and reduces the unemployment level for them. But unfortunately, tourists’ visit to Pakistan is decreasing tremendously with ups and downs each year. Therefore, the purpose of my thesis is to search for the positive and negative factors affecting the tourism industry in Pakistan, to compare the performance of our tourism industry to some potential neighbouring countries to see where Pakistan stands and lacks in terms of competitiveness, to find the role of government towards the improvment of this industry and to suggest some possible strategies for the improvement of this industry. The primary data was collected by conducting interviews and survey questionnaires inside and outside the country from domestic and international tourists in 2007 and 2008. My son and close relatives in Belgium, Sweden and UK helped me in getting the questionnaire filled by foreigners to study their views about Pakistan as tourist place. The secondary data was collected through my personal visit to PTDC and Ministry of Tourism. The estimated results revile that the poor accessibility, under development, fragility, marginality and the continuous social / political problems of the country are the factors that have redcued the tourist visit ratio to Pakistan. Secondly, the Governmnet of Pakistan has also failed to implement policies and strategies that could have proved a stimulator for the tourism industry. The conclusion drawn from the collected data is that the tourism industry of Pakistan has a lot of ups and downs in alternate years i.e. from 1995 till 2008 showing the worst year of tourism in 2008.The reasons for this fall lie in the political and social problems of the country and lack of active participation of tourism authorities. Domestic and international tourists love the nature, culture and food of Pakistan and 80% of them want to travel around pakistan but unfortunately the insurgency and lack of facilities have resulted in the falling rate of their travel. My suggestions for the progress of this industry are that the Governments should show seriousness towards the tourism industry and take necessary steps like improving the tourism infrastructure, controll the insergency in the country as soon as possible, build strong relationships with outside world, portray the positive image of Pakistan via media etc so that the rank and standard of Pakistans tourism industry can improve globally. Research limitations that I faced during data collection includes the limited information sharing by the PTDC and Ministry of Tourism as their data is not up dated properly. Secondly there is a lot of difficulty in finding local and international potential tourists due to the political and social disturbance in the country and also the shy and introvert behaviour of the people especially women. Therefore, I also made use of the idea of conducting survey outside the country. The important aspect or value of this research is that it has brought in to consideration almost all the important factors that are effecting the tourism industry according to the view of potential tourists and at the end provide some suggestions that can improve the current deterioating condition of this industry