Puri vs. Varanasi destinations: local residents' perceptions, overall community satisfaction and support for tourism development

Tourism development is a concept widely embraced by marketers and planners of tourist destinations. However, it has received little attention in the context of religious pilgrimage sites. This paper reports an exploratory case study and contributes to the body of knowledge on tourism development in two cities (Puri and Varanasi) that have been famous for pilgrimage tourism in India since ancient times. More specifically, the aims of the study are to investigate and compare the tourism impact that local residents perceive in these two historic pilgrimage sites and to ascertain how the tourism impact affects overall community satisfaction and tourism support. The results from the structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis indicate that the perceived economic impacts on tourism development support of Varanasi residents is higher than that of Puri, and the same conclusion applies to the connections between the impacts of sociocultural and overall community satisfaction. However, the differences between the economic and environmental impacts of these studies and the overall community satisfaction as well as the impacts on tourism support are not significant. The implications for research and practice are discussed.