The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) issued on Thursday permits to four new private airlines, including Kashmir Air, to play its part in promoting tourism in Pakistan.
The four airlines include Kashmir Air, Alwair Airways, ASSL Air, and North Air. For flights, these airlines will use helicopters, fixed-wing planes, and rotary-wing planes, according to a national daily.
In the first phase, all the private airlines have announced to introduce flights from Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad to access the areas offering the potential of tourism. The flights will be available to and from the tourist destinations including Gilgit-Baltistan, Mohenjodaro, Skardu, and Gandhara in the second phase.
Separately, the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) announced that it was developing an e-portal to offer one-window solutions for facilitating both local and foreign tourists.
Citing a PTDC official, the state-run news agency Association Press of Pakistan (APP) reported that the project was nearing completion and it would attract foreign tourists. The official said the tourism entity was conducting social media promotions to project Pakistan as a desirable tourist destination.
It is worth mentioning here that the government has formulated an endowment fund worth Rs. 1 billion to project the country’s undiscovered, attractive locations and tourism resorts for local and foreign tourists. To boost the tourism business, PTDC has created a 10-year framework, called the National Tourism Strategy, from 2020 to 2030.
