Tourism resumed in Azad Kashmir after 3 months of lockdown, but Islamabad politics is still hitting AJK

Tourism is open again in Azad Kashmir

Tourism activity in Azad Jammu and Kashmir is moving again after a lost summer. Hotels in Neelum Valley, Rawalakot, Sudhan Gali, Dao Khan and Leepa Valley are taking bookings. Roads that sat quiet in June are seeing jeeps, families, and weekend traffic once more.

That restart matters. For AJK, summer is not a side season. Mid-May to September is when most visitors come, and when hotels, drivers, cooks, and small shops earn the money that carries them through winter. This year that window was largely closed.

PTG’s Azad Kashmir tour packages and Neelum Valley tour packages are open for travel again. The harder question for operators is not whether the valleys are beautiful. It is whether a family leaving Islamabad can still trust the road.

What the lockdown actually did

Authorities imposed a travel ban on 5 June 2026 after talks with the Joint Awami Action Committee broke down. Visitors were told to leave the northern belts. Reporting at the time described a complete freeze on outside entry through 20 June. The official ban was weeks, not a gazetted 90-day closure. The commercial damage lasted much longer.

Hotel occupancy in Neelum, Rawalakot and Leepa Valley dropped to near zero. Bookings were cancelled and refunded. Mobile data and internet were cut in tourist zones in the first half of June, so online reservations and payments stopped with the roads. Landslides on the Neelum road in mid-June then blocked what the protest calendar had already emptied.

By the time shops and transport began to reopen at the end of June, and more of the market came back in July, the peak had already slipped. From the June shutdown to late September is about three months of lost summer trade. That is what operators mean when they say the lockdown lasted three months.

The losses the industry is still counting

AJK’s tourism economy is estimated at about PKR 11 billion a year, with roughly 500,000 people depending on visitor traffic, according to figures circulated from the AJK Department of Tourism and research cited by local press. In a normal peak week, daily spending in the valleys has been put at PKR 55 million to PKR 68 million. During the June freeze that circulation fell close to zero.

AJK government officials later said the June strikes, road blockades and shutdowns caused an overall economic loss of PKR 10 billion to PKR 15 billion. The tourism slice of that, stated at a June press conference, was about PKR 4 billion. Those are official estimates, not PTG’s own audit. They match what hotels and drivers told us: a full peak month vanished, and the weeks after it did not come back at summer rates.

The damage sat in ordinary places:

• Empty rooms in Neelum, Rawalakot, Sudhan Gali and Leepa after mass refunds.
• Jeep and coach operators with no return trips from Muzaffarabad or Islamabad.
• Daily-wage staff who earn PKR 1,500 to PKR 3,500 a day in season and had no winter cushion.
• Guest houses that could not take new bookings while internet and fuel were down.

Treat those figures as published ranges from AJK officials and tourism research, not as a final audited total.

Islamabad is still the bottleneck

AJK tourism does not start in Keran or Banjosa. It starts in Islamabad. Almost every domestic group flies or drives into the capital, sleeps, then takes the Muzaffarabad road. If Islamabad is tense, AJK feels it the next morning.

That is the second half of this story. The valleys are open again, but the political situation in Islamabad is still affecting AJK tourism. Families delay confirmations. Corporate groups wait. Overseas Pakistanis ask whether the airport road will be clear on their arrival date. A booking that is “open” on paper is not the same as a booking a guest will pay for.

We wrote earlier about PTI long marches and their cost to Pakistan’s tourism industry. The same mechanism is at work now. Road closures, rumour, and last-minute schedule changes in the capital cancel rooms in Neelum that no protest ever reached.

For operators the practical effects are simple:

• Shorter booking windows. Guests wait until the week of travel.
• More refunds and date changes than a normal September.
• Empty midweek inventory even where weekend enquiries have returned.
• Higher transport risk if the Islamabad–Muzaffarabad corridor is delayed.

What travellers should do now

If you want to visit AJK this autumn, go with a confirmed road plan and a hotel that is actually open, not a screenshot from June. Check the Neelum and Rawalakot weather, keep a buffer day for the Muzaffarabad road, and book through an operator who can move the stay if Islamabad delays the start.

PTG can place groups on current Kashmir itineraries and Neelum Valley itineraries using published hotels. We will not invent rates or rooms that are not on the books. If you already hold a postponed summer voucher, ask us to reissue it against live hotel availability rather than assuming the old date still holds.

Azad Kashmir did not lose its lakes, meadows or roads. It lost a season. Tourism has resumed. Recovery now depends less on another poster of Banjosa Lake and more on a calm week in Islamabad.