Puri vs. Varanasi destinations: local residents’ perceptions, overall community satisfaction and support for tourism development

Abstract

Tourism development is a concept widely embraced by marketers and planners of tourist destinations. However, it has received little attention in the context of religious pilgrimage sites. This paper reports an exploratory case study and contributes to the body of knowledge on tourism development in two cities (Puri and Varanasi) that have been famous for pilgrimage tourism in India since ancient times. More specifically, the aims of the study are to investigate and compare the tourism impact that local residents perceive in these two historic pilgrimage sites and to ascertain how the tourism impact affects overall community satisfaction and tourism support. The results from the structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis indicate that the perceived economic impacts on tourism development support of Varanasi residents is higher than that of Puri, and the same conclusion applies to the connections between the impacts of sociocultural and overall community satisfaction. However, the differences between the economic and environmental impacts of these studies and the overall community satisfaction as well as the impacts on tourism support are not significant. The implications for research and practice are discussed.

Keywords:

• Pilgrimage sites
• local residents’ perceptions
• overall community participation
• Puri and Varanasi cities
• tourism support

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xiaoping Zhuang

Xiaoping Zhuang is a full professor in School of Tourism Management at South China Normal University. She received her PhD degree in Department of Philosophy from Sun Yat-sen University, China in 2012. Her major areas of research interests include tourism ethics and law, perception of tourism impact, etc.

Li Lin

Li Lin is currently a postgraduate student in School of Tourism Management at South China Normal University. Her research interests include hotel management and e-business.

Jun (Justin) Li

Jun (Justin)Li is a full professor in School of Tourism Management at South China Normal University. He did his postdoctoral work at the Florida State University between 1 January 2015 and 6 April 2017. He received his PhD in Business Administration from University of Macau. His current research interests include tourism sharing economy, big data analytics in hotel industry, social media marketing, etc.