Destination Evaluation and Tourism Economic Impact Assessment: A Case Study of Varanasi

Abstract

Tourism has been recognized as an important instrument for development of the community, society and the destination region. A number of attractions and destinations around the world can be acknowledged for their development especially through tourism. Economic impact of tourism development is quite visible on the destination community through employment generation and infrastructure development in the region. There are multiple impacts occur when a place is developed as a tourism destination. Around the world, in many developing and developed countries, the impacts viz. environmental, socio-cultural and economic has been observed and analyzed in number of studies before. This study is for destination evaluation and assessment of economic impacts of tourism in the study area Varanasi. Both primary and secondary data has been used to assess the objective. The analysis reveals that, the tourism development in the study area has made both positive and negative impacts. There is a significant increase in employment generation, quality of life of local community and significant tourism and basic infrastructure development in the region. While some negative economic impact has also been observed in the form of increase in land price and rented accommodation for the residents.