GILGIT: The Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) has been revamped after which it has initiated the process of its rightsizing and restructuring.

As many as 58 motels, hotels and land owned by the PTDC in various parts of the country are being privatised to attract private sector investment.

PTDC Managing Director (MD) Aftab Rana told Dawn that the organisation had started working on many initiatives to promote tourism and attract adventure tourists to Gilgit-Baltistan.

`PTDC remained active to promote and develop tourism across Pakistan till 2010. After the devolution of tourism under 18th amendment it remained almost dysfunctional till 2018,` he said.

PTDC owned assets worth billions of rupees in Pakistan with 58 including motels,restaurantsandlandinIslamabad,Gilgit-Baltistan, Punjab, Balochistan, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Azad Jummu and Kashmir.

He lamented that due to lack of financial resources to maintain these properties, their condition was deteriorating and PTDC had been facing the cumulative losses of over 700 million.

`PTDC has now been restructured and made a profitable organisation after continuously running in losses for the last 10 years. Now PTDC has made a comeback and its accounts showed a profit of around Rs26.4 million in the year 2020-2021, he said.

He said the federal government had decided to upgrade and further expand PTDC motels with the help of the private sector and for this purpose these properties are being leased out through a transparent open bidding process.

Recently, five motels in GilgitBaltistan were given on a long lease to the private sector and four more motels were in the final stage of the bidding process while properties in other provinces were also being leased out.

He added that land at Naltar, Gilgit and Talachi were being offered to private investors to build three to four star hotelresortsinnearfuture.

He said 272 employees of PTDC were laid off to cut the administrative costand operational expenses of the organisation. The laid off employees have been given golden shake hand package worth Rs673 million along with the payment of Rs412 legal dues.

The PTDC chief said Pakistan had the potential of generating four billion dollars annually through tourism but due to various reasons it was yet to utilise this potential.

Talking about challenges for foreign tourists, he said the main issue was the strict visa regime and air connectivity which discouraged foreign tourists in visiting Pakistan.

Moreover, perception about the country as a safe tourist destination needed to be improved along with proper security measures to ensure the safety and security of the visitors.

He said recently PTDC established an endowment fund with the investment of Rs1.35 billion for promotion of tourism activities.

Mr Rana said PTDC was also planning to hold an international tourism conference in Pakistan in the last week of May this year in which a large number of tourism industry professionals from Pakistan and other countries will participate to discuss the future strategy for the tourism sector of the country.

An international sustainable tourismforum and expo is also on the cards where delegates from more than 40 counties are expected to participate to share international best practices and case studies on the sustainable and responsible tourism.

Pakistan is also planning to host the D-8 Tourism Ministerial Conference in June which will be attended by tourism ministers from Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Turkiye and Pakistan, he added.

The PTDC is also preparing a tourism portal which will provide tourism related information to the visitors. This portal is in the final stage of completion and very soon will be launched.

A mobile app and tourist helpline number are part of this initiative to provide state of the art facilitation to foreign and domestic visitors.

The PTDC has launched a National Tour Guides Training Programme with a target to train 1,000 guides all over Pakistan through a standard two-week entry level extensive training.

Meanwhile, training of high altitude mountain guides and porters is also underway in Gilgit-Baltistan.

The PTDC chief said last year 1.9 million foreign tourists visited Pakistan while over 1,600 adventure tourists visited GB.