Tourism is a highly fragile and competitive industry and calls for people’s involvement at all levels. If the climate is not conducive to tourism, it can never grow and flourish.
The growth in market share to India still remains considerably lower than other destinations such as Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Egypt. The two main reasons for this appear to be perceptions and expectations clients have of India, and the value of money.
Image Source: ciitourismfest.com
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Planning for Tourism is Important Due to the Following Reasons:
1. The lack of publicity is primarily responsible for India occupying a dismal position in the global tourism scenario, and not the lack of infrastructure development, as envisaged by the Indian Tourism industry.
2. Tourism is still not developed in India to the required extent. Both the government and private sectors can help in developing tourism.
3. Tourism is a multispectral activity involving other sectors such as agriculture, fisheries, manufacturing, historic parks and recreational facilities, transportation and other infrastructure facilities.
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Therefore policy planning of and coordination of development products are needed to ensure that all these projects are properly developed and integrated to serve tourism and benefit from tourism activities.
4. Tourism is essentially selling a product of an experience to consumers and there must be careful matching through the planning process, but without compromising on environmental and socio cultural integrity in meeting market demands.
5. Tourism can bring various direct and indirect economic benefits which can be optimised through careful and integrated planning; without planning these benefits may not be fully realized.
6. Tourism can generate various socio-cultural benefits and problems and planning can be used as a process for optimising the benefits and for integrating tourism into the local society.
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7. The development of tourist attractions, facilities and infrastructure and the tourist movement generally have an effect on the natural environment and so careful planning is required, so that desirable environmental impact is reinforced and environmental problems are not generated from tourist development.
8. Tourism development requires particular employee skills and capabilities for which there must be appropriate educational training. Satisfying these education and training needs, requires careful programming and in some cases development of specialized training facilities.
9. Achieving tourism development requires special organisational structure, educational and fiscal measures which must be considered in the planning process.
10. Tourism is presently India’s third largest export industry after readymade garments and gem and jewellery.