Comparative Study on Tourist Preference for Homestay Destinations among Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Sikkim

In the hill bound nature based tourism, popularity of Homestays has been growing very fast in the Hilly regions of India and same trend has been witnessed in the two hilly districts of West Bengal, Darjeeling & Kalimpong and in Sikkim too. This present study was an attempt to investigate the competitive tourist pulling capability of such homestay based tourist destinations from the perspective of tourist’s preference upon destination attractiveness. In this study the multi-criteria decision-making tool TOPSIS has been used to assess the present competitive position of these destinations and finally paired sample t-test was applied for identifying any difference in tourist’s preferences among these three destinations. Interestingly the result portrayed a tight neck to neck competition with marginal difference in TOPSIS score and paired t-test confirmed the presence of significant statistical difference in homestay tourist’s preference for these hotspots of this region. Though Darjeeling is found slightly ahead marginally of others but facing a fierce competition indicating serious concern for tourism policy-makers, infrastructure upgradation etc. in order to give an edge over the other two rivals.