The document discusses tourism behavior in India and opportunities to increase tourism. It notes that while Indians have several leisure options, tourism is less utilized due to work and family commitments. Most tourism is limited to a few demographic groups like techies and young people. However, the tourism market could be much larger if different segments were targeted through tailored marketing strategies that highlight learning opportunities and address common barriers to tourism like costs and seasonal travel. Strategies are needed to encourage tourism for various demographic groups and interests through well-planned packages.

1. Tourism Behavior in India<br />The options for an Individual to spend his/her leisure time or relaxation would be Movies, Watching TV, Food at a hotel & few others options including tourism. But tourism as an option to spend leisure time is less utilized due to busy work schedule or family commitments. Individuals usually opt out of tourism plans because of these commitments; unable spend few days on a tour<br />Getting into further understanding of behavior across regions, age groups & profession (demographic understanding) often we see only few segments of people opting for regular tours into wildlife, adventure, nature, pilgrimage or international. Very few people plan a tour yearly or half yearly.<br />Option of tourism takes a back seat due to busy work schedule, family commitments, festivals, schools to kids and so on. Tourism is an option where an individual gets to learn about new things about places, culture, traditional practices, nature, wild life and so on. Encouraging tourism with the approach of learning about new things will help improve the tourism scenario. <br />Marketing activities, advertisements and promotions structured highlighting the learning aspects of tourism will immensely help improve the tourism scenario. This is very important since people with different demographic background get to learn about new things into different areas of tourism. <br />Tourism companies tend to concentrate more on markets where the demography consists of techies and youngsters. It overlooks other segment of people including unorganized business sector and people from other demographic background. It is an irony that companies compete on pricing rather than concentrating building other markets which is potentially huge. It is necessary to devise strategies to offer services to markets that are less addressed. Additional efforts need to be put to encourage tourism into various demographic segments on different tourism interests. <br />Segmenting the market broadly into techies, unorganized business sector, government professionals, banking, public sector professionals, students; the market is rather huge which can be addressed with well devised marketing strategies and activities. <br />Few of the hurdles tourism companies face in addressing different segments of markets are the cost of travel, lack of interest by people, difficulty in reaching to the new market segments, tourism being seasonal. Structuring packages encouraging tourism and addressing the road block with tactical marketing strategies will improve tourism as an option of recreation.<br />Getting a good tourism experience:<br />Few of the things that could be considered to get an enriching tourism experience:<br />Plan travel well in advance<br />Explore new places<br />Avoid long journeys / plan travels in a cyclic route<br />Plan food during your travel; have plenty of fruits to nourish yourself<br />Match clothing according to the weather conditions of the tourism spot(s).<br />Avoid travel to crowded places or during peak seasons<br />Do not litter or pollute; stick to eco friendly products <br />Copyright Smart Consulting 2010, All rights reserved (www.smartconsulting.in)<br />