New Delhi: Nearly 5,000 hotels built in Kashmir over the last six years are illegal, Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha said. He made the remarks at the Ethical Tourism Conclave organised by the Tourist Trade Interest Guild at the SKICC in Srinagar.
“I want to share a number with you. From 2021 to the middle of 2024-25, more than 5,000 hotels were built in the valley. It is true that 90 per cent of them are illegal, only 10 per cent are legal. But 5,000 were built. They include (hotelier) Mushtaq Chaya’s Radisson,” Sinha said.
Mushtaq Chaya is a leading hotelier and business tycoon of Jammu and Kashmir. He is also the president of J&K Hoteliers Club and was among the audience at the conclave where his hotel Radisson was included in the 10 per cent of hotels which are legal.
During his speech, Sinha further dived into the arithmetic of the investing into these new hotels.
“Some are worth Rs 200 crore, some Rs 10 crore, but on an average, there is an investment of Rs 15 crore per hotel or around Rs 75,000 crore (in aggregate),” Sinha said.
The conclave which focussed on the tourism in Kashmir also delved into the hotel boom in Kashmir. According to Sinha, 90 percent of these investments were made by Kashmiris and ten percent from outsiders.
Mushtaq Pahalgami who is the president of Hotels and Guest Owners Association in Pahalgam said over 1,000 of these newly built hotels have emerged in the last two years.
“LG Sinha has said the right thing. Phalgam has witnessed this boom in the hotels. In several cases, the hotels have been built on land taken for residential purposes,” said Pahalgami, who had also attended the conclave.
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Stakeholders of peace
It is not only the hotels which have witnessed a spike, there has been a substantial increase in the tourist taxis as well. Sinha said that around 20,000 tourist taxis were purchased between 2021 to 2025.
Terming these numbers as encouraging, Sinha called them stakeholders of peace.
“I call them stakeholders of peace. Maybe they built hotels the wrong way but they are stakeholders of peace… I see it as a good sign that stakeholders of peace have increased in such large numbers,” Sinha added.
Kashmir’s hotel industry has endured repeated setbacks over decades of conflict. The Pahalgam terror attack last year, in which 25 tourists were killed, had dealt another severe blow to the industry. Within days, nearly 80 percent of hotel and travel bookings were cancelled.
According to the Jammu and Kashmir Tourism Department, the number of tourists fell sharply from 2.36 crore in 2024 to 1.78 crore in 2025 – approximately a decline of 58 lakh visitors.
A hotelier, who wished to stay anonymous, countered Sinha’s statement and said that most newly built hotels were not illegal.
“Building a hotel requires a lot of investment and risk. Why would anyone do it illegally to increase the risk component,” the hotelier said.
(Edited by Janaki Pande)