Beach Sustainability Tourism Index (BSTI)
Beach Sustainability Tourism Index 2009 is an unique effort by IHR to undertake a first ever research of top 30 Beaches in India and come out with a ranking based on survey.The primary aim of the project was to raise an awareness for the tourists as well as blow a whistle regarding the general health of the beaches.
Beaches in India, as most would know are not only just sun n sand as most of them have different connotations attached to it. While some of the beaches are sacred with temples, some are the final resting places for persons who mattered while still others are fisherman exclusives. Thus the question was "what are the best beaches in India and on what yardstick are they best". We zeroed on 30 beaches across the coastline of India-east, west, Konkan, Coromandel and Malabar Coast with different levels of popularity and targeted tourists.
The research was governed purely from a tourism perspective with a predefined set of parameters. The different parameters were taken in such a way to focus on the beach from a balanced perspective. For example we had things as diverse as accessibility of the beach to aesthetics and hospitality to eco-unfriendliness. For us the most important factor was to connect with the masses with our results and this could only be possible with simple results. And that was precisely what we did.
The dedicated team of IHR put the sample set to different stakeholders of the 30 identified Beaches to come out with the findings. Of the 1000 people interviewed included hoteliers, guides, in-house local city experts, cab drivers besides the tourists.
BSTI 2009 is primarily a report card of the going ons in a beach and eventually we plan to do it across various destinations so annually so that all you need to check the report card to decide on the tourism-Quotient of a particular place.
This is in short what Beach Sustainability Tourism Index (BSTI) is all about.
