Importance Of Alternative Tourism

Alternative tourism and its potential: A need for development- A case of Jammu & Kashmir

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to study the potential of alternative forms of tourism and why it is important to adopt the alternative forms of tourism for development of tourism in Jammu & Kashmir. This paper helps in identify the tourist expectations, to understand the need of alternative forms of tourism, to develop strategies to develop alternative tourism, the differences between alternative and mass tourism and to offer suggestions.

Keywords: Alternative tourism, tourist expectations, Sustainable tourism, Mass tourism

Introduction: Tourism industry in India is rapidly growing and is the largest industry in terms of jobs creation and contributing to nation’s GDP. Tourism industry generated 14.02 lakh crore (US$220 billion) or 9.6% of the nation 's GDP in 2016 and supported 40.343 million jobs, 9.3% of its total employment (The World Travel & Tourism Council). Tourism is the third largest foreign exchange earner after gem, jewellery &ready-made garments. Tourism generate more jobs than any other sector for every rupee invested. So, tourism industry seems to be a boon to Indian economy from the revenue generation and job creation point of view.

Being a multi – destination country, India has a lot of potential to be the no 1 market for tourism industry as with a variety of tourism resources India can ideally attract a huge no. of tourists across the globe. As every single