A meeting of the Tourism Development Corporation of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (TCKP) held consultations on Friday on the draft tourism policy before its submission to the cabinet in the current month. Besides, Secretary of Sports, Tourism, Archaeology, Museums & Youth Affairs Department Aftab Akbar Durrani, Managing Director TDCKP Mushtaq Ahmad Khan, former secretary of Tourism Shahibzada Khalid, ex-minister of tourism Syed Aqil Shah, Aftab Rana, Lieutenant Colonel Sahibzada Anees (retired), Akbar Zeb Swati, Zahoor Durrani and others attended the meeting.
The tourism policy became the need of the hour after the 18th Amendment and especially the National Tourism Policy which was made in 1990 has become outdated and requires immense changes. A policy is a set of rules that lead the path. The tourism policy of KP is not an individual effort but includes 200 stakeholders that have participated in it and shared their views in the whole process, through consultation sessions held across the province.
Aftab Rana while giving the presentation on the tourism policy said: "According to the World Economic Forum, which is issued on an annual basis, Pakistan is ranked as 113 out of 133 countries, which is a very alarming." He also said that "the annual economic impact of tourism in Pakistan is approximately Rs 12 billion.
According to the draft of the tourism policy, there are 7 components of tourism; attractions (the flora fauna, landscape etc), accessibility (roads etc), accommodation (hotel, youth hostels etc), activities (to keep the people engaged), amenities (telephone, bank, hospitals etc), acts (laws that regularise the system to increase the quality services) and actors (stakeholders - private and public sectors both). The meeting stressed that the KP domestic tourism market is very strong and isn't affected by security etc, while the international market is very fragile for which a positive image of the province should be displayed.