Title: An assessment of the impact of tourism development at Varanasi: perspectives of local tourism businesses

Authors: Debadyuti Das, Sushil Kumar Sharma

Addresses: Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, Delhi 110 007, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221 005, Uttar Pradesh, India

Abstract: The present study attempts to assess how far tourism development in a host region results in both positive as well as negative impacts. A series of paired t-tests are carried out between the expectation of the tourism business community on tourism impacts and their experience with the same, which reveal that their expectation is remaining unfulfilled on all eight positive impacts. Results of t-tests pertaining to eight negative impacts further indicate that the experience of the community with two negative impacts is significantly poor compared to their apprehensions. The study findings pertaining to step-wise multiple regression analysis have revealed that four tourism impacts are most influential in shaping the future scenario of tourism at Varanasi.

Keywords: tourism impacts; tourism business community; Varanasi; tourism development; India; local tourism.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTP.2009.024551

International Journal of Tourism Policy, 2009 Vol.2 No.3, pp.167 - 186

Published online: 09 Apr 2009 *

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