POTENTIAL OF ECO- TOURISM IN CONTEXT OF EMPLOYMENT GENERATION IN ASSAM; PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS

The concept of Eco-tourism is, developed around the idea of travelling and staying nights in different places of natural beauty. It has the aim of both environment conservation and improvement of welfare of the indigenous people. In Assam, tourism is primarily developed around the nature. Therefore, various natural components like parks and sanctuaries, lakes, rivers, forests and its habitants like wild life, are the main tourist attraction of the State .But, it is found that absence of adequate publicity at national level, there is no co-ordination committee on tourism among all the seven sisters of North East region which may establish a link to attract the same group of tourists or target customers to different states one after another. No Market segmentation is made on the basis of geographic, demographics and socio-economic aspects to have a clear picture of the tourism users. The lifestyle, personality, religion, literate, illiterate, rich, poor etc. all these elements have deep bearing on development and promotion to tourism. Yet, the tourist agencies and departments have not studied the changing needs and requirements of different segments with a view to innovate their strategic decisions. Therefore, this study has been undertaken with the objectives of importance of tourism in the economy of Assam in context of employment generation. This study also analyses the steps taken by the central as well as the Govt. of Assam in the process of development of tourism sector in the state and the role that can be taken by regional planning for the promotion of tourism industry. Keywords: Eco-tourism, Regional planning, Tourism industry, Tourist agencies