MARITIME TOURISM: GLOBAL SUCCESS STORIES AND THE CASE OF PAKISTAN

Abstract

The coastal / maritime tourism is an important segment in a multi-trillion dollars and multivariate global tourism industry. It offers one of the new avenues and fastest growing areas for significant role in global economies. Various countries such as Maldives, Indian State of Kerala, Singapore and Thailand etc. have focused on maritime tourism with good governance practices evolved over period of time to earn substantial revenues from it. Pakistan has also immense maritime tourism potential with diversified natural, religious, and cultural tourism resources. But Pakistan’s maritime tourism is considered very weak due to various issues. With qualitative research, this paper attempts to explore and suggest solutions for the development of maritime tourism sector of Pakistan by analysing the tourism governance of global success stories and evaluating the nationwide potential and challenges. Arguments are developed that the factors behind the success stories of Maldives & Kerala state in India can act as guidance for taking initiatives on the proposed potential sites in order to uplift the maritime tourism sector in Pakistan. It is anticipated that the effective implementation of this paper’s recommendations would be instrumental in gearing up Pakistan’s Maritime economy.