Formulation of Methodological Approach for Sustainable Tourism Using ‘GSTC’ Criteria: A Case Study of Sagar Island, India

Sagar Island, located on the mouth of River Hugli is famous for its cultural heritage of Gangasagarmela. This annual Mela (festival) attracts thousands of pilgrims from all over the country. The major part of the annual income of the local community is generated from this ‘GangasagarMela’. These only achieve some extent of economic gain of the unorganized sector of Sagar Island. Also, the people engaged in other profession utilize this event for extra income. The pilgrims (tourists) are mostly day-tourists, come to offer their homage to Kapil Muni (Sacred Father) on the very auspicious day of Makar Sankranti (last day of the Bengali month Chaitra; middle day of the month January) without staying at Sagar. The tourist flow throughout the year is very negligible, while huge numbers of pilgrims (tourists) used to visit at a particular time, overshoot the carrying capacity of this island. Sagar Island has great aesthetic value offers sandy beaches, scenic beauty, rich terrestrial and marine bio-diversity, and that way it has immense potential to attract the tourists for leisure and holiday-trips. But Sagar Island has miserably failed to emerge as a tourist destination due to lack of infrastructural facilities and sustainable planning. This study attempts to assess the potentiality of sustainable tourism in Sagar Island. Sustainable tourism is the management of all resources in such an effective way that the social, economic and aesthetic needs can be fulfilled, maintaining cultural integrity, essential ecological processes, biological diversity and life support system. Along with this, responsible tourism is also important as both the host and tourist have equal responsibility to maintain, protect and elevate tourism in a sustained way. The potentiality of sustainable tourism in Sagar Island has envisaged according to the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria (GSTC) which describes a state of the art and/or the improvement of certain features of a region in terms of tourism. All the GSTC criteria are not applicable for this low lying coastal island while some other non-listed GSTC criteria must be considered. Criteria weightage analysis can be a useful method to evaluate the potentiality of tourism in Sagar Island along with the issues and recommendations.