Perception of Tourist: a Case Study of Uttrakhand.

The sate of Uttrakhand which has also acquired an acronym "Dev Bhoomi" because of its tremendous potential for the tourism activities and specially related to Holiday/Leisure was the purpose of visit of about 58.2 percent of the foreign tourists visiting Uttarakhand. In addition, about 21.9 percent visited for the purposes of health, yoga, etc. These two groups taken together constituted over 80 percent of all foreign tourists visiting Uttarakhand shares a top five position in terms of Domestic tourist arrivals and also the foreign tourist arrivals in the country as per the data released by Ministry of Tourism, Government of India. Indian domestic tourism market which has crossed the mark of 563 million tourist arrivals has major share of tourist in the form of Religious Tourism and Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in Uttarakhand. According to statistics maintained by the Tourism Board, the estimated tourist visits in Uttarakhand during 2006 were about 18.99 million by domestic tourists and 0.1 million by foreign tourists. According to a survey undertaken by a consultancy agency in 2005 on behalf of the Ministry of Tourism, the major source markets of international tourists for Uttarakhand were United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia, Other European Countries, Nepal, Germany, etc.This paper is an attempt to understand the present scenario of tourism Industry in the state and also understand the profiling of the tourists.