Assessing the geo-ecotourism potentiality of west bengal with special reference to its coastal region using geospatial technology

Abstract

The tourism industry of India is one of the most significant contributors to the world's GDP, ranking seventh as reported by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), but currently it has received quite a hard hit due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The state of West Bengal in India has a great platform and portfolio of diverse tourism, and the two concepts, that is, geotourism and ecotourism, have enormous potential to cultivate and produce revenue, as they have come up in recent years in terms of sustainable tourism. The current effort throws some valuable light on the possibility of turning the many geologically, geomorphologically, and ecologically significant tourist spots and heritage sites of West Bengal into geo-ecotourism sites, aided with geospatial techniques. Over the years, the Geological Survey of India (GSI) has identified many geographically unique and exotic landscapes as potential tourist sites. However, lack of initiative has been carried on to promote, sustain, and maintain these sites. At the juncture of unawareness and ignorance of such sites and the solemn menace of overtourism, probably geo-ecotourism is the only way to popularize and commercialize these tourism sites while simultaneously conserving them, which would be not only a treasure for our country but also for the entirety of the world. The present submission attempts to record mapping and analysis to depict the nature, strategy, and potential of geo-ecotourism in West Bengal and the site suitability of its coastal region, employing the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method with the application of geospatial technology.