A Community Response to Tourism, Focusing on the Home-stay Program in K Village in Nainital, Uttarakhand, India <Research Note>

Imran Md Masood

Nguyen Ngoc Thi Bich

Journal of Urban and Regional Studies on Contemporary India

The tourism industry in India has grown enormously and is becoming a major source of economic growth in India. This paper focuses on studying the possibilities of home-stay programs and the willingness of the residents in Uttarakhand on such programs. Considering the tourism perspective of India, home-stay programs are rather unusual. Only Munsiyari and Sarmoli in the Johar Valley, and the Ladakh Autonomous Region in Jammu and Kashmir are the two examples. This research is a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches through household survey, an average treatment effect, community economic development analysis, field observations, interpretative analysis, and ethnographic understanding of K village, Nainital District, Uttarakhand. The results show that the tourism industry has not brought economic benefits for the households involved in the industry; however, this could be owing to the community not being involved in tourism development. In addition, most of the villagers considered that the home-stay program could create opportunities for jobs and improve the income of the local community. In the study area, we found private entrepreneurship, but the home-stay program has not yet been developed. This research paper expects to assist making decisions to initiate an extensive home-stay program under the “Endogenous Tourism” program with some re-evaluations of not only the previously mentioned village of Uttarakhand, but also other remote locations in India, considering the colorful and cultural-rituals of rural living in India.

rural development

community base tourism

home-stay

rural study

India

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The Center for Contemporary India Studies, Hiroshima University

(c) 2018 The Center for Contemporary India Studies, Hiroshima University

[ISSN] 2188-5222