Himachal Pradesh: 'Air fares continue to rise in peak tourist season’

DHARAMSHALA: Air fares to this hill destination are on rise in peak tourist season. Kangra airport is the busiest airports of Himachal Pradesh. High fares are hindering the tourism flow to this region by deterring high end tourist to stay away. The fares for a 45 minute air journey between Delhi – Dharamshala have crossed the mark of 10,000 rupees till first week of July.
Tourism industry players said that generally fares remain here between three to six thousand rupees for one way travel.But as the tourist season starts it goes high to any extent. Many times it crosses 20,000 rupees mark.
“One can buy an international flight ticket in comparison to the rates of flights to Dharamshala,” said Rajeev Sharma, a hotelier in Mcleodganj area.
Deepak Deewan, a travel agent from this region, said that the only mode of travelling in Himachal is by road and high end clients don’t have much time to spend 12 hours from Delhi or 6 hours from Chandigarh to reach Dharamshala.
“There is a high demand of bringing these airfares to a reasonable mark. This has remained a poll issue in last many elections,” he added.
In 2014, the former BJP MP Shanta Kumar has promised to raise this issue of air fares in parliament but nothing much was done in his tenure which ended this year.
Now, Kishan Kapoor the BJP MP won these elections with record margin of about 4.77 lakh votes has said that he would take up this issue in his tenure and bring the solution to this area.
People are also keeping hopes on Kapoor as he belongs to Dharamshala and had represented this constituency as MLA for many times.
Earlier there were four flights operating between Delhi and Dharamshala. Two each by Air India and Spice Jet airlines. But now only three are being operated here.
It was said that many big properties are yet to come up in this hill town including five and seven star hotels. But investors are too considering the travel cost and condition of basic infrastructure for connectivity to this hill town.