Selection of Preferable Eco-Tourism Destinations using Analytical Hierarchy Process in Purulia District, West Bengal (India)

Abstract

Eco-tourism is a form of nature based ecologically sustainable tourism, getting popularized in recent years among tourists due to the adverse impact of conventional tourism. The conventional way of tourism severely impacted the environment, loss of habitat and destruction of nature and natural landscape, Pressurizing local resources, and the Loss of cultural uniqueness of the local community. Purulia district in West Bengal (India), with its diversified picturesque landscape such as lush green Forest, mesmerizing riverscape, lakes, waterfall, hills, and uniqueness in the local community's culture gives ample potentiality of eco-tourism development. The aim of this paper to Explore potentiality of Ecotourism in Purulia district, West Bengal, India using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and geographical information system (GIS). Initially ecotourism inventory dataset was developed based on following criteria: Elevation, Slope, Proximity River area, Distance from Road, Distance from Settlement patches, Distance from Ecological sites, Distance from railway Track, Distance from existing Tourism sites using ARC-GIS 10.6.1 software. Later, the suitability map of eco-tourism development has been developed by applying Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) with combination of the criteria with their respective weights and categorized into five suitability classes as Highly Suitable (S1), Moderately Suitable (S2), suitable (S3) less Suitable (S4), and unsuitable (S5). Finally, After the identification of suitable zones, six alternatives eco-tourism destinations are identified. This proposed method may be helpful for the for local stakeholders and public administration in identifying potential ecotourism destination and planning for sustainable eco-tourism development.