Priority areas of intervention for improving pedestrian infrastructure and facilities at tourist destinations in India

Abstract

An investigation is reported on formulation of improvement policy and priorities for development of pedestrian infrastructure and facilities at tourist destinations. Perception data were collected on a Likert-type scale in terms of both importance and present performance of 31 selected related attributes, by intercepting tourists at three popular tourist destinations in India. Revised Importance-Performance analysis with Fuzzy-C means clustering was performed to determine the factor structure and management schemes, and by comparing them, the priority attributes were identified. The findings indicate that in the context of an emerging country like India, the pedestrian infrastructure and facilities are generally grossly deficient in all the three study tourist destinations, and thus require immediate interventions. The present work also highlights the need for a policy by the Tourism Department to develop infrastructure and facilities at tourist destinations as per the requirements of the tourists, in order to promote tourism and encourage sustainability. The process for selecting priority attributes, as demonstrated in the work, also provides valuable guidance for prioritizing the investment during improvements of pedestrian infrastructure and facilities at tourist destinations.