Tourism Potentiality Zone Mapping by Using the AHP Technique: A Study on Bankura District, West Bengal, India

Abstract

Tourism is a multidimensional sector having significant contributions to sustainable development, economic upliftment, and social benefits. Although the Bankura is full of tourism potential, but its’ tourism potentiality has not been properly used. This study is designed to identify the tourism potential zones of the Bankura district using a 5-steps integrated methodology, which includes the preparation of the thematic layers (Eight parameters and thirty-four indicators) (Step-1); creation of matrices for pair-wise comparisons (Step-2); classification of the raster maps (Step-3); use of the weighted sum method to get the composite variables (Step-4) and classification of tourism potential map using the natural breaks (Step-5). This study has selected eight parameters, which are the Tourist Intensity Measure (TIM), Climate (C), Physical (P), Social (S), Economy (E), Environmental Quality (EQ), Amenities (AN), and Diversity in Local Art and Crafts (LAC′). Approximately, 23.33% area is identified with a high tourism potentiality, 58.74% area is observed under the moderate tourism potentiality, and 17.92% area is recognized as a low tourism potentiality. Efficiency testing of the tourism potentiality map indicates high precision utilizing the considerably high R-square value (0.94). The study uses an exceptional methodological framework applicable in any region.