Exploring the Dynamics between Tourist Perception and Urban Morphology around Tourist Precincts in India

<p>Over the years, the Tourism industry has witnessed a significant increase in tourist numbers, leading to a huge demand for the growth of infrastructure in the destinations. India is one of the largest tourist hubs of the world, offering a wide variety of nature-based, religious and heritage tourist attractions. With the increasing tourist numbers, there has been considerable change in land use around tourist sites. This change in built environment around tourist sites is influenced by the nature of tourism activity, geographical constraints and also the existing development regulations and guidelines. The volumetric growth in destinations impact legibility, accessibility, character and the overall perception of tourism precincts. Unplanned development surrounding tourist sites have a negative impact on the attractiveness of the destination. Therefore, this study aims to explore the pattern of growth of built form and respective changes in urban feature for a decade from 2009 to 2019 through 2-Dimensional and 3-Dimentional analysis, along with tourist perceptions for four popular tourist destinations in India. The destinations include Indian cities namely Agra, Puri, Ooty and Goa selected based on distinguishing tourism activities and geographical characteristics. The primary tourist sites for each destination are picked based on popular choice of tourists around the World. Remote sensing and geographical information system are used for temporal analysis of volumetric growth of built form, where Digital Surface model (DSM) and Digital Terrain Model (DTM) are used to extract factors such as building height, building density etc.  which helps in understanding the morphology of the tourist precincts over the decade 2009 and 2019. Spatial quality assessment is conducted based on the tourists’ perception gathered through primary survey. The findings illustrate a relation between the growth pattern around various tourist sites and respective tourists’ perception.The research will help the policymakers to formulate proper spatial design strategies and regulations that are necessary for a healthy and sustainable built environment around the tourist sites in the destination.</p>