Case Study on Mumbai: Tourism Impact and Issues

This case study examines the tourism scenario in Mumbai, including tourist visitation, destination attractiveness, impact of tourism, and issues faced by the city. It discusses the economic, environmental, and socio-cultural impact of tourism and analyzes the low government support and safety concerns. The study also suggests policy implications for enhancing tourism in Mumbai.

Assessment 3: Case study on Mumbai
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Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................3
Tourist visitation....................................................................................................................................3
Destination attractiveness......................................................................................................................4
Impact of tourism..................................................................................................................................5
Issue analysis.........................................................................................................................................7
Policy implication..................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................11
Bibliography........................................................................................................................................12
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Introduction
According to Reddy (2008) tourism plays crucial role in national development, it helps in
creating employment, distributing wealth in different economic sector Pablos, et al. (2008). It
is required to plan and coordinate tourism on regional basis to enhance its overall impact.
Tourism is growing industry in India in different aspects such as medical tourism, health
tourism, eco-tourism, accessible tourism etc. Mumbai is heart and financial capital of the
country; it is among most populated city in the country. This paper aims to examine literature
in context of tourism and what actually occurring in Mumbai. It presents analysis on present
tourism scenario in selected region and its implications.
Tourist visitation
Mumbai is considered as city of dreams; it is the capital city of Maharashtra state. It is the
major financial and entertainment head of country. It has wide range of holiday choice for
people of all age groups.
There is tremendous rise in India tourism; in 1981 the figure was only 1.28 million, which
has reached to 10.04 million year 2018. In the year 2017 there was 14 percent rise in tourism
in comparison to year 2016. There were 5507051 non resident Indian arrivals in the country
in year 2017 Ministry of Tourism (2018). Foreign tourism arrival in India is majorly from
South Asia, followed by Western Europe and North America. December is considered as
peak tourism month as it encounter major tourist arrival in country (October to December) as
well as Mumbai.
Analysis states that almost 6 million tourist visit Mumbai every year. Being the largest city
in India and the tenth largest city in the world, it has huge market attractiveness. It is the 30th
most visited city in the World. Annual growth of tourism in India in year 2018 was 9.7
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percent Ministry of Tourism (2018). There are three ways through which tourist enter the
city, it include air, land and sea. Majority of arrival almost 79 percent is though air mode,
followed by land i.e. 19 percent and then sea.
In the year 2017, foreign tourist arrival via port was 1.52 million in Mumbai. Tourist mainly
comes from Bangladesh, UK, US, Canada, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Australia, Germany, China
and France. Further, airport arrivals at Mumbai of foreign tourist was 328936 in year 2017,
which is 19.4 percent total country tourism and 205465 tourist in first six months of year
2018. Gender wise tourist division shows that 59.4 percent of the tourist were male, followed
by 40.59 percent of female and 0.01 percent of transgender tourists (Ministry of Tourism
2018).
According to literature, the proportion of female tourist range between 30 t0 50 percent,
however it is substantially low in certain countries such as Iraq, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia
etc. Age wise distributions shows that largest proportion of tourists aged between 35 to 44
years of age (21.1 percent). Followed by 45 to 54 years of age (19.9 Percent), and then 25 to
34 years of age (19.1 Percent), and the lowest id 65 years and above (Ministry of Tourism
2018).
Destination attractiveness
Attractiveness of a place plays vital role in motivating or rejecting tourists from a particular
location. There are different models such as Lieper model, motivation of satisfaction theories
that helps in understanding factors to attract tourist to a particular destination (Yusof, et al.
2012). As Rojek stated tourists have the urge to travel to witness the extraordinary object.
MacCannell work focuses on analyzing the semiotic of attractions. According to Leiper,
tourist attraction must have three elements such as human element, central and informative
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element; they must be interconnected. Mumbai is also a tourist generating region as flights to
several international locations goes via Mumbai only (Zalatan 1994).
Mumbai is unique location that offers beach fun, historic monuments, best of night life and
much more. It is a holistic location that includes wide range of attraction or entertainment for
all age group. It has Siddhivinayak temple, Global Vippassana, Haji ali Dargah, Mount Mary
church as religious attractions; RBI museum, Elephanta cave are few of historic places.
Mumbai has 15 museums on different subjects such as science, history, technology, art, Flora
and Fauna, history, archaeology etc that offer wide range of informative attraction to tourist
(maharashtratourism government 2018). Bollywood is another entertainment sightseeing
itinerary in the region. It has huge high risers as well as British style architecture masterpiece
such as caves, forts, temples, shopping malls etc. It has beaches, wildlife sanctuaries, nearby
hill stations, resorts and world-class lounges and clubs for nightlife. Tourist satisfaction
depends on several factors such as accommodation, transportation, food, prices and several
internal attributions. There is strong relationship between motivation and satisfaction
dimension to tourist experience (Zalatan 1994).
Impact of tourism
In simple terms, host community is the one that welcome visitors and serve them wide range
of services in their vicinity. Tourism involves changes in social and economic process of the
host community. Environment is considered as bedrock of tourism development, it consist of
comparison between home environment and destination environment. It include both natural
such as hills, mountains, beaches and cultural factors such as built structures, caves, ancient
monuments etc. Other cultural factors include local culture, food, and folk dance. Tourism
has huge impact on host community, different category include economic, environment and
socio-cultural impact. Every category includes both positive and negative impact due to
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tourism, it is crucial to balance these opportunities by balance positive and negative impacts
(Kaur & Sharma 2017).
Wide range of literature is present on impact of tourism on host communities. Smith has
given cross cultural contract model that state social impact is directly dependent on type of
tourists visiting the destination. According to tourist area life cycle theory of Butler, with the
growth and demand for tourism there is significant negative impact on host community.
Whereas, social representation theory states there is huge difference in host community
attitude and perceptive with varying culture (Venkatesh & Raj 2016). None of these models
completely comprehend the impact on host community. Social exchange theory is the
simplest theory that states in a well established tourist destination, there must be
compensation for host community, as they have to tolerate unwanted activities due to over
use of facilities (Enemuo & C, 2012).
There is huge positive economic impact of tourism in Mumbai. According to research it
helped in generating US $3.9 billion. It has also helped creating 677900 jobs which is 7.3
percent of total employment in the region. Mumbai tourism is flourishing at high rate; it is 5.4
percent of country’s total tourism (Uttarakhand Open University 2018). Such high footfall
also helps in increasing employment opportunities; increase in investment, there is rise in
spending in development of infrastructure which also helps in improving community standard
of living (Slabbert & Scholtz 2018). Tourist contribute through their expenditure, it helps in
increasing wages, interest, rents etc. It also help in increasing business proceedings, enhance
government revenue through tax, change in business properties through investment etc.
(Ivanov & Webster 2007).
Tourism helps host communities in sharing their culture with tourist. Community
involvement helps in providing cultural experience among tourists. Tourism has also helped
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in income and employment generation, lowering poverty in the region. There is significant
rise in business tourism (Sequeria & Nunes 2008).
However negative impact include intangible brand image of the destination. High tourism
also leads to commercialization of traditional culture, destruction of heritage properties and
historical sites. There is rise in use of English language and loss of native and mother tongue
in society. Only 42 percent of people are fluent in Marathi (which is the regional language).
Tourism also cause harm to different attractions, some of the famous tourist attractions of
Mumbai such as Chowpatty Elephanta caves have reached to unsustainable level of tourism,
sculptures are degrading causing danger of heritage loss (Hajare & Hajare 2013). Therefore,
tourism is also destroyer and corrupter of culture, it impact local values negatively. There is
risk of ecological destruction. There is rise in pollution due to rise in traffic. Economically,
tourism can also cause rise in inflation by increasing general price of goods and services in
peak season causing problem for local people. Another economic problem is capital leakage,
it is seen that majority of expenditure done by tourist goes to airlines, internal companies with
headquarter in tourism home country, therefore very little income comes to region. There is
rise in infrastructural, incidence cost and economic dependence (Matthai 2016).
Issue analysis
Low government support
Despite of being second largest tourist attraction in India, there is fewer attractions and other
key issues encountered by the city. One key problem is low government support. There is
lack of coordination among different tourism agencies such as State Maritime Board (SMB),
Ministry of Defence (MoD), Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF), Maharashtra
Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC), Mumbai Port Trust (MPT), etc. According to
an article in DNA, just to light up the Gateway of India, an iconic tourist sport they had to
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arrange 23 meetings. As it is a self-sustained industrial state, there is huge financial and
business system present in the city; there is low focus on tourism sector.
There are several challenges related to tourism include infrastructure, cleanliness, proper
toilet facilities at tourist spots. CRZ regulations do not permit construction within 200m from
HTL coastal areas, lack of single window tourism system (Patel 2017).
Government need to make people aware about tourism benefits, the way it can help in
generating revenues (Harrison 2001). There is no tourist desk available at famous tourist
sports like gateway of India, Elephanta caves etc to guide tourists, and rather they are
dependent on private boat operators. There is presence of huge bargaining system; such
journey is unsafe and uncomfortable for visitors. Elephanta Caves is 1500 year old heritage
property, however there is tremendous fall in tourist footfall due to lack of basic amenities at
the spot. There are no railings to support climbing of steps; there are no proper toilets,
drinking water at the spot. According to tourist guide they ask their group to carry their own
water. According to archaeologists, bureaucratic mess caused such poor management of this
heritage site. There is no action by government to make this site plastic free. Government can
organize free public campaigns to help visitors regarding basic rules of the site, to ensure no
littering is done, keep it clean and offer basic amenities to visitors.
Another tourist spot, birthplace of Shivaji known as Junnar taluka, which is a popular
destination among adventure enthusiastic tourists, is suffering from lack of planning and
proper infrastructure. It offer wide range of adventure tourism, trekking options, have the
potential to attract large number of tourists. However, this village lacks basic facilities for
tourists; there is need for road connectivity, hotels, information centres and cleanliness.
However, this place has been declared as tourist destination but no work is done on
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improvement by government. Therefore government needs to get serious about tourism
promotion in Mumbai to enhance its total profitability (Hughes, et al. 2015).
Corruption, terrorism and safety issues
Another key problem is corruption, terrorism and safety issues with women. As a country,
India encountered 25 percent drop in tourist in year 2013 due to safety. Modest increase in
crime against women made it unsafe for women travellers to travel alone. Past terror attacks
have formed strong negative image in foreign market, it raised safety concerns among visitors
(Gunasekar, et al. 2018 ). There are different corruptions issues such as unregulated pricing
by taxi drivers. India is surrounded by hostile terrorism environment and attacks from
Pakistan and China. Different terror attacks in any region causes fear and tourism drop in all
regions. Mumbai being financial capital holds huge risk. There is lack of integrity due to
presence of bribery in system which impact trust. It cause reduction in state-revenues, it also
takes always chance from government to develop fair infrastructure. Social violence on the
basis of language, region also causes disparity and negative impact of tourism (Planning
Commission of the Government of India 2007). Some other basic areas of concern include,
domestic travellers aims to travel at their own, single tour aims several themes, there is lack
of basic infrastructure at several stop over locations.
Policy implication
Government has developed a three –tier governance mechanism for governance management.
It will start with formation of committee headed under chief secretary to develop mega
projects and review of tourism strategies. Another committee is headed by principal secretary
(Tourism) to facilitate more investment in tourism industry and third is district tourism
promotion committee. There is presence of single window clearance mechanism for
hospitality industry operators. It aims to create digital window and online provision to ease
license approval, enhance application processing of various hospitality business segments, to
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remove information duplication. It also helped in reducing data redundancies and executes
automated workflow. Government aims to promote sustainable tourism by promoting
management of resource effectively. To enhance safety and security of tourist, Maharashtra
police has launched tourist officers at 10 top tourist destinations in the city, they have special
information regarding tourists customers, culture etc. they are responsible for preserving
tourist security. Training and enforcement is done, by introducing separate training programs
with lectures on sustainable marketing, etiquette and communication skill development.
Maharashtra Tourism Corporation provides various training program to grass root level
workers, without any chargers. Maharashtra government also scheme for accommodation for
budgeted travellers. The bread and breakfast scheme is old, was started with the objective to
give a feel regarding local lifestyle, culture, food to tourists.
According to tourism policy 2016, tourism department of Maharashtra, they are trying to
develop infrastructure to promote exhibitions, conferences, incentives and meetings. As
Mumbai is the financial capital of India, there are several business transactions, availability
of technology. There is need to develop value industry partnerships to grow new business
events. To achieve this goal, government is planning to develop Maharashtra MICE Bureau,
which will be similar to Dubai convention bureau. It aims to collect bids from different
regions to establish MICE centres in different areas, establish a single window clearance
system for conferences and exhibitions (Government of Maharashtra 2016). Then promotion
will be conducted to encourage tourist to come for such events with their families.
Government is also signings MOU with different airline to promote Mumbai as hop-over
destination for several locations. Government is also launching smart ticketing system in
Mumbai to ease travelling to major destinations. It will have a smart card that can be used
for all travelling purpose expenditure. It will provide discount to youth and senior citizens. It
will help in currency exchange and shopping from government owned shops.
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Conclusion
Tourism is one of the primary industries that help in economic and social development of a
country. It is growing at a fast rate, promoting trade, foreign exchange, employment, tax
revenues and regional development. Despite of being a major city, huge footfall land business
centre Mumbai tourism industry require regulation, infrastructural development to ensure
sustainability. Tourism is a multidimensional activity, therefore integration between central,
state and private sector organizations in required. Key problems include safety, security,
environmental and dilution of public property. Tourism department has development policies
to overcome issues and promote sustainable tourism through smart ticketing, training etc.
Local government plays key role in successful policy implementation.
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