{"title":"Inclusive Tourism Adopted to Geosites: A Study in the Ajodhya Hills of West Bengal in India","authors":"Avijit Ghosh, Rahul Mandal, Premangshu Chakrabarty","doi":"10.3390/tourhosp4020020","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Inclusive tourism is a specialized branch of tourism emphasizing the inclusion of the disabled, who otherwise could not participate in tourism, despite having wealth to spend for leisure and recreation. There exists a research gap in analyzing scope of geotourism in this context. Disabilities affecting access to geosites affect geotourism since most of the geosites all over the world are situated in difficult terrain from the stand point of accessibility. It is inclusive tourism, also called accessible tourism, that facilities the consumers to reach the desired destinations. The present study assesses such destinations in Ajodhya hills, located in West Bengal, India, a geotourist’s paradise in terms of rarity and diversity, aesthetic appeal, and cultural value. The study derives an accessibility–attraction model to identify inclusive tourism planning priorities from tourism marketing perspectives. Extensive field work followed by the application of qualitative methods of data analysis yield results dedicated to sustainable geotourism development. The discussion reveals the scope of developing specific facilities, using GIS, which encourage physically challenged people to visit geosites and simultaneously fulfil the objective of guiding planners and policy makers to identify and develop more suitable sites for introducing inclusive tourism facilities.","PeriodicalId":45185,"journal":{"name":"Tourism and Hospitality Management-Croatia","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Tourism and Hospitality Management-Croatia","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3390/tourhosp4020020","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Inclusive tourism is a specialized branch of tourism emphasizing the inclusion of the disabled, who otherwise could not participate in tourism, despite having wealth to spend for leisure and recreation. There exists a research gap in analyzing scope of geotourism in this context. Disabilities affecting access to geosites affect geotourism since most of the geosites all over the world are situated in difficult terrain from the stand point of accessibility. It is inclusive tourism, also called accessible tourism, that facilities the consumers to reach the desired destinations. The present study assesses such destinations in Ajodhya hills, located in West Bengal, India, a geotourist’s paradise in terms of rarity and diversity, aesthetic appeal, and cultural value. The study derives an accessibility–attraction model to identify inclusive tourism planning priorities from tourism marketing perspectives. Extensive field work followed by the application of qualitative methods of data analysis yield results dedicated to sustainable geotourism development. The discussion reveals the scope of developing specific facilities, using GIS, which encourage physically challenged people to visit geosites and simultaneously fulfil the objective of guiding planners and policy makers to identify and develop more suitable sites for introducing inclusive tourism facilities.
期刊介绍:
Tourism and Hospitality Management is an international, multidisciplinary, open access journal, aiming to promote and enhance research in all fields of the tourism and hospitality industry. It publishes double-blind reviewed papers and encourages an interchange between tourism and hospitality researchers, educators and managers. Editors of Tourism and Hospitality Management strongly promote research integrity and aim to prevent any type of scientific misconduct, such as: fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, redundant publication and authorship problems. All submitted manuscripts are checked using Crossref Similarity Check (iThenticate). Nurturing a scientifically based approach to research, the journal publishes original papers along with empirical research and theoretical articles that contribute to the conceptual development of tourism and hospitality management. Editors look particularly for articles about new trends, challenges and developments, as well as the application of new ideas that are likely to affect the tourism and hospitality industry. The general criteria for the acceptance of articles are: contribution to the scientific knowledge in the field of tourism and hospitality management, scientifically reliable research methodology, relevant literature review and quality of the English language.