Tourism – Man it’s dead

AUGUST 1999 - I gave the Tourism Convention last month a wide miss. Tourism is just about as dead as the dodo and we should simply give up squeezing it to gain from the large potential it has and may one add, always had. The truth of the matter is that tourism as the rest of the world sees it, is never going to happen here. Not now, not next year, not the year which we have already dubbed ‘Visit Pakistan Year.’ Of course most of those behind this latest snare to grab tourists will not agree, but that’s another matter. You can’t run tourism on potential and still make pots of money. It just doesn’t happen.

I am no expert on what draws a person to shake out his passport, pay a visit to his tour operator and hole up with his travel agent to give him the deal of a lifetime. People travel for all kinds of reasons and there is a bit of the Marco Polo in all of us, but then more and more, tourists have a big choice because it’s a big world and there are any number of airlines, ships, boats and jeeps to take you to worlds you probably would have a hard time locating on the map. David Ogilvy the advertising legend who died last week said that the ‘difference’ was what sold tourism in the first place. He went on to make his point saying that while it was admittedly difficult to make an Englishman go bananas over history, he would be a dead ringer for exotic food. The English have too much history and too much bad food. I suppose tourism is many things to many people. Some look for solitude, some for crowds, some for culture, some for shopping, some seek divinity and others seek sex. It takes all kinds and the clever country is the one which makes available what it thinks people want from a visit. We have never understood this simple premise, which you will agree is not exactly rocket science.

Instead tourism has fallen into the hands of the bureaucrats who have successfully killed it year after year till the corpse is so disfigured it’s hard to make out what it was in the first place. In between there have been good intentioned people as well who genuinely wanted to make a difference. The world’s travel writers have been one category who have worked hard year after dreary year to make things happen here in a big way. Talking to Isabel Shaw years ago I was sucked into her enthusiasm for this part of the

world but now almost a decade later, I know that she knows that it will always be the same as it always was (and always will be). A country with enormous possibilities. That’s it. Because you need officialdom to clear the path – they don’t do any work; just make rules and make easy things difficult – tourism is in serious trouble right away. Officials have to find ways to block things and deny permissions which explains why photographing a crumbling bridge is still an offence here. As if the enemies of Pakistan are forever transporting spies armed with Instamatics to capture our bridges so that they know we have them. What would anyone want to do with pictures of bridges I leave to your wild imagination. The Indians might want them the most but then they need not bother. Any old man in Delhi can tell you exactly where the bridges are since they are the same ones which were up at partition. If bridges are such a big no no who has allowed newspapers to publish pictures of them every other day ? I saw one of the Ravi Bridge only last week and it was close enough for any saboteur to develop elaborate plans to blow it to kingdom come. Amazing when you think about it. But tell that to a tourist with his Nikon and you lose him forever.

One of the weirdest moments was a year back when late at night, arriving on an international flight into Lahore (Lahore International if you please), the hostess announced that taking in liquor was prohibited as was its consumption and photography at the airports was strictly forbidden. As some pale and slightly worried ‘tourists’ heard this cheerful welcome notice they peeked out and saw huge patches of darkness and the occasional yellow, watery light and the same common thought crossed their minds. What kind of place is this ? Two hours later, pushed, shoved and pummeled about by rude officials, flying trolley drivers and aggressive security personnel – many with side arms, they had their answers.

No, this country may have all the 8,000 metre peaks inside its territory, even those that are not its own, now that the GHQ has told us how to go about sorting out that little matter, and it can cry itself hoarse that Alexander was here as was Marco Polo and a hundred other crazies, and it can talk as much about its heritage (confusing question that one) and a million other matters, but the tourists won’t come except for a trickle. A country where it takes you 20 years to build a miserable ski resort and it’s not complete by a long, long shot even now, where on the ‘famous’ LLH Friendship Highway, tourists are stopped 22 times at check posts and the women are ‘frisked’ thoroughly by big men with large hands, is not going to send the world into a spin getting here. Only relatives and the odd trader or two and some lunatics will take the trouble to be here. With law and order gone to the dogs, the two neighbours hell-bent to nuke one another, religious bigotry on the upward swing, even Marco Polo would have to be dragged here. Instead of hosting ‘Visit Pakistan Year’ we might as well have ‘Don’t Visit Pakistan Year’ but then come to think of it, we celebrate that particular custom every year anyway.