ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is preparing to host the World Tourism Forum next year and the D-8 Summit in 2022 to showcase the country's tourism potential, attract investment and build Pakistan into an international brand, Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari, the prime minister's adviser on tourism and overseas Pakistanis, said on Tuesday.
Last year, the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan announced it had loosened travel restrictions in the hope of reviving tourism by offering visas on arrival to visitors from 50 countries and electronic visas to 175 nationalities.
“In the world [for some nations], around 10 to 9.8 percent of GDP comes from tourism and in Pakistan it is 2.8 percent of GDP,” Bukhari told Arab News. “We intend to take it to 8 percent in Pakistan over the next three years.”
Pakistan hopes all top hoteliers and investors will attend the World Tourism Forum, Bukhari said, which would put Pakistan on the global tourist map, and pave the way for creating fresh job opportunities and the construction of new infrastructure at tourist destinations.
“The goal is that we are creating a brand for Pakistan for the first time, which is going to be an international and national brand to sell Pakistan’s tourism holistically,” Bukhari said when asked what Pakistan hoped to gain from hosting the World Tourism Forum and the D-8 Summit, which is an organization for development cooperation between Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey.
To promote Pakistan’s tourism potential nationally and internationally and enhance capacity-building for the provision of quality human resource, the government had also set up the National Tourism Coordination Board, Bukhari said.
Among its major plans to revive tourism was commercializing the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) and lease it out to the private sector for 30-33 years, the PM’s advisor added.
“We have formed a ten-year policy with a five year action plan, which the prime minister will launch,” he said. “We are just waiting [for] coronavirus to die down.”
The tourism sector has collapsed around the world as lockdowns to contain the spread of the coronavirus have grounded flights and kept visitors away even from some of the world’s most popular holiday destinations.
Pakistan was last a prominent tourist destination in the 1970s when the “hippie trail” brought Western travelers through the apricot and walnut orchards of the Swat Valley and Kashmir on their way to India and Nepal.
Since then, deteriorating security has chipped away at the number of visitors. Pakistan's tourism industry was also badly affected by militant violence after the September 11, 2001, which unleashed a war in neighbouring Afghanistan.
As part of its efforts to repair its global image and boost tourism and investment, Pakistan invited Britain’s Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton on a visit in October last year, the first visit to Pakistan by British royals in 13 years.
In January this year, Pakistan appeared on a Forbes list of must-visit places for 2020.
