International Journal of Tourism and Travel https://www.i-scholar.in/index.php/ijtt <div id="i-scholarabout">International Journal Tourism and Travel (IJT&amp;T), the bi-annual journal of Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel Management (IITTM), foresees to create value for enterprises and organisations in tourism, travel and related sectors and those committed to support them- policy makers, intervention agencies, researchers and academics, by establishing a platform for learning through sharing from experience, dialogue, creativity and imagination. IJT&amp;T target audiences are entrepreneurs, business executives, policy makers, intervention agencies, researchers and academics among others.. IJT&amp;T shall have special interest in South, South-east Asian and Pacific tourism and travel and its variants.</div> Publishing India Group en-US International Journal of Tourism and Travel 0974-2603 The Digital Platforms and Homestay Business : A Study in Indian Context https://www.i-scholar.in/index.php/ijtt/article/view/213596 Rising disposable income of a section of the population, higher penetration of internet and social media along with better accessibility to far-flung regions played positive roles in boosting India’s tourism prospects. Homestays have already emerged as an integral part of the tourism economy in India as an alternate accommodation offering and its access to the Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) have strengthened the economic prospects and the global reach. With this backdrop, the paper explores how digital platforms have changed the business operations of the homestay owners in India using the primary survey data from 6 states. It also examined the existing regulatory gaps that can be addressed so as to promote homestay business from policy perspectives. The findings enabled to conclude that promotion of homestays can fulfil the aspirations of generating livelihood and employment for the local communities and to achieve the sustainable tourism goals while adding fillip to the overall dynamics of tourism in India. S. Sutheeshna Babu Dripto Mukhopadhyay 2020-07-01 2020-07-01 13 Challenges of Stereo-Typing Destination Image : An Autobiographical Narrative Approach to Address 'Flower-Power' Hangover in Goa https://www.i-scholar.in/index.php/ijtt/article/view/213598 Tourism development is a potent force of socio-economic transformation particularly in the destinations and it often consequents to irreversible changes including the stereotyping of the image. At the level of image construction, while the destination managers play key roles and pursue experimentations with alternating propositions, there also exists many cases of revealing in nature about the instrumentalities of the ‘drifters’ or the pioneer tourists in the making and propagation of destination imageries. The influence of the carefree Hippies of 1960s’ in creating such imageries across the warmer world including in India has been such that even the destination managers had to exploit those imageries in both overt and covert manners so as to sustain the interest in the destinations. The authors make an attempt to examine the challenges of perpetuating the destination stereoptypes of Goa around the ‘flower-power’ of 1960’s through an autobiographical narrative approach. The results make a strong case for abandoning of the stereotypes and to adapt promotional strategies by bringing Goa’s innate strengths in its distinct nature and culture. Smitha Bhandare Kamat 2020-07-01 2020-07-01 13 Communicating with Key Travel Decision Maker for Stronger Competitiveness of Destinations : A Multilevel Perspective for East Asian Family Vacations https://www.i-scholar.in/index.php/ijtt/article/view/213599 Destination marketing organizations (DMOs) find it challenging to appeal to the key decision-maker on travel destination for family vacations because family members have diverse and competing needs and preferences. Research has suggested that family members make decisions about travel destinations for family vacations jointly. The authors contend that in decisions about the destination for family vacations, the family’s role structure for decision-making is subject to the characteristics of the society, the travel, and the household. The investigation was undertaken among 1,016 respondents from the senior high school students from China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Exhaustive chi-square automatic identification detector analyses was employed to predict the likely decision maker (LDM) – the father, the mother, or the child(ren)––using a decision tree model. The results revealed that: a). Society, which represents people’s socio-cultural and ideological backgrounds, was the strongest predictor of the LDM for decisions about family travel destinations. The “father” was found to be the most acceptable target category when we considered both its cumulative gain and recall rate; b). The study finds an above-average probability of the fathers’ dominance as decision maker, suggesting that the decision tree technique is appropriate for DMOs to use in targeting the father-dominant market of travel destinations in East Asia. The managerial measures that can be applied to improve promotion strategies of DMOs have also been proposed. Yi-Fang Lan Che-Jen Su 2020-07-01 2020-07-01 13 Vulnerabilities of ‘Resilient Tourism’ and Emerging Trajectories : An Indian Perspective https://www.i-scholar.in/index.php/ijtt/article/view/213604 The business of tourism is woven around creating longing consumer experiences through a variously connected chain of divergent spatially fixed tangible and intangible assets. Relentless pursuits of the visitors for novelty and uniqueness drive the business forward with great momentum and enhance its resilience. However, the natural and anthropogenic stressor events push the vulnerabilities of tourism and destinations, often making it very fragile and struggling to withstand the effects of the onslaughts. This paper has been scoped to map the vulnerabilities of tourism in Indian context and to elucidate the perspectives for a resilient tourism. The results suggests that domestic and outbound tourism sectors in India have been seen largely resilient in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century while FTA’s did face setbacks during the global level disasters. Building resilience is a multi-faceted praxis and its effectiveness demands involvement and integration of key stakeholders at all levels- destination, industry and establishment. S. Sutheeshna Babu 2020-07-01 2020-07-01 13