Let’s go to Puri: An empirical study on post-pandemic travel intentions of Odisha residents

Considered as one of the chaar-dhaams(holiest four) of India, Puri is famous for being the adobe of Lord Jagannath. It is the most visited destination in the state of Odisha. It serves as a get-away spot and a place with highest religious importance for the residents of Odisha. Due to widespread pandemic, lockdowns and outbound restriction, Puri along with its tourism stakeholders have suffered an unprecedented decline in footfall. Travellers have shown travel avoidance behaviour coupled with lack of travel intentions across the globe in the current situations. This study identifies the factors which influence the post-pandemic Puri travel intentions through an empirical approach. An extended TPB model was proposed with predictors like attitude, subject norms, perceived behavioural control and past Puri travel behaviour regressed against the criterion. A statistical data analysis was performed using SPSS on a sample data of 327 respondents to verify the hypothesis. The study will help the tourism partners and collaborators along with Odisha government to devise and implement strategies to attract existing and new travellers of Odisha and re-flourish the sector as a whole. It will also guide researchers of tourism to assess domestic travel with a different perspective in light of pandemic.