Sustainable Tourism Development in India

Abstract

The issues surrounding the understanding and practice of sustainability in tourism are becoming increasingly important to both academicians and tourism planners. For more than two decades the attainment of sustainable development and the protection of touristic assets have been at the forefront of central policy issues in global tourism development. Recently, it has been argued that collaborative and associative forms of governance among tourism stakeholders are growing in importance in the drive for sustainable tourism development. Despite the increasing number of debates on the role of stakeholders in tourism, they are not well supported by empirical studies and how such stakeholders can contribute to the sustainable development of tourism. This study investigates various sustainable tourism development dimensions among tourism stakeholders and whether these dimensions depend on the demographic characteristics of stakeholders. By employing factor analysis, the study reveals that there is a set of sustainable tourism development parameters that is most common. The results also indicate that there is a significant difference among the tourism stakeholders in terms of perceived sustainable tourism development dimensions in India.