Wild Life As The Growing Tourism Sector In The Country – A Comparative Study On The Youths Of Two Different Geographical Areas

Tourism Industry in India is one of the most lucrative industries in the country and contributes substantially to foreign exchange earned. In the past couple of decades with good supported promotion this industry has developed as an important means of employment generation. In fact during 2010, seven million tourists visited India and spent US $ 13.9 billion, thus making India one of the major global tourist destinations. Augmented tourism in India has created jobs in a variety of associated sectors, both directly and indirectly. Tourism is one of the success stories of the 20th century and is concerned more with the satisfaction of individual rather than with the scientific and technological achievements. Almost 20 million people are now working in India’s Tourism Industry. India’s tourism is thriving, owing to a huge flow in both business and leisure travel by foreign and domestic tourists and is expected to generate approximately US$ 275.5 billion by 2018. There has been an increase in environmental awareness and pressure of urbanization. Now, urban masses look for new get away locations, where they can get involved in active outdoor recreation. Thus, national parks and sanctuaries have emerged as the favourite destinations. The visitors to these national parks are usually the youth in 18 to 30 years of age group. They are driven by the motivation to do something “adventurous”. This study was conducted in two cities with different set of respondents; since they are in the close proximity of the National Parks and Wild Life Sanctuaries. The prime objective of study has been to understand the reason of preference of Wild Life Tourism and the expectations of the tourists about various aspects during their course of travel and stay. The basic procedure adapted was tourist interviews through convenient sampling. The total respondents were about 326 between the age group of 20 years to 45 years. This included males and females SEC A1, A2, B1 and B2. It is assumed that the people of these SEC have the buying capacity as an influence of and reaction to word of mouth and advertisements. Both quantitative and qualitative data was collected for analysis. Key words: Tourism, Wild Life Tourism, Tourists