Assessment of Tourism Potential in Western Odisha

Tourism is now considered to be a largest industry and it provides a lot of benefits for many tourist destinations. Western Odisha is an under developed tourism region in Odisha State of India. The immense tourism potential of Western Odisha region is yet to be exploited. Being an unexploited region, there is ample opportunities for creating a market for all the players involved in the tourism business. The purpose of the study is to identify and evaluate various components tourism planning and recommend suitable planning strategies towards sustainable tourism development of Western Orissa. The study involved collection of both primary and secondary data. A questionnaire was administered to 400 respondents including both domestic and foreign tourists who visited the study area, under random sampling method. The data collected through the questionnaires has been analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 21.0 for Windows. Cross-tabs (Chi-square), t-test, ANOVA (F-test) and Multiple Regression were generated to understand the responses to the key questions. The study finds that currently there is inappropriate development of tourism in most of the destinations.