Sikkim Face the Heat of Darjeeling Strike - Faces Heavy Loss in Tourism Business

SILIGURI: The ongoing strike and the political turmoil have highly impacted the festival season tourism business of the adjoining state Sikkim. Though the movement and the strikes are now slowly declining, but the damage has already taken place and is not likely to reverse for the Himalayan state, which is the backbone of economy.

“The situation deserve serious outlook as our state has faced very high number of booking cancellations due to the ongoing strikes in our neighbor hill town, Darjeeling,”said PD Rai, the only Loksabha MP from Sikkim. According to T Roy, Secretary Eastern Himalayan Tour and Travel Operators Association, Darjeeling has faced heavy tourism crisis and over 80% cancellations were made due to the political turmoil in the first week of August, peak booking period for festival season. Nearly 70% of the travelers, arriving in the region, prefer Sikkim and Darjeeling...plz refer

http://www.darjeelingtourpackage.com/ during festival season. So, any cancellation for any side causes heavy loss to both the sides,” said veteran tour operator and tourism advisor to Government of Sikkim R Basu.

“UK and USA also issued refreshed travel alert advising all its citizens to avoid travelling to Darjeeling region, due to the indefinite strike and the political turmoil. The notification has impacted the region including Sikkim, “said S Sanyal Director of a major tour operating house.

As the tourism estimations goes, Sikkim contributes around 40% of annual business of around 400 crore of this region. Sikkim is gifted with amazing land features as 82% of its 7000 sq kms geographic area are under forest cover, 3% under Glaciers and 14% under round the year snow covered, the state Sikkim is a major tourism hub and a hotspot with hilly terrain ranging from 900 ft to 28,000 ft above sea level.

“Sikkim is highly dependent on tourism revenue and it makes us keen on utilizing the potential without degrading the environment, rich bio-diversity and the sensitive ecology,”said Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Chamling. His ministry has always prepared initiative for tourism mission with a target to lure around 10 lakh domestic tourist and 40 thousands foreign tourist per annual by 2015, comparing to the figure of 7 lakh and 20 thousand respectively.

The state had a difficult time in the year 2011 as the devastating earthquake jolt Sikkim that killed nearly 125 people. Since then the state has come back in an excellent way and there is high volume of tourism flow in 2012. This year also the beginning of the tourism season was good, but the scenario overcast due to the ongoing strike of Darjeeling,”said Basu.