IHR Conducts Survey of Top 30 Beaches in India

Noida, India, February 11, 2010 --(PR.com)-- Speaking about this landmark initiative, Mr. Ankit Rastogi, business head and Cofounder of IHR highlighted the triggers, core issues, focus and challenges on successfully completing one of IHR’s most critical assignments to date.

“BSTI (Beach Sustainability Tourism Index) 2009 is a survey done by IHR to evaluate major public recreational beaches from a list of 30 popular beaches across the vast Indian coastline. This is primarily an effort aimed towards boosting sustainable tourism and raising awareness of tourists. IHR boasts of a considerable stake in the long coastline of India from Konkan to Coromandel. Most of these beaches spanning the shoreline are popular selling weekend destinations. For the last 2-3 years we had realized the importance of the beaches in the overall tourism value-chain of domestic circuit. ” Outlined Mr. Rastogi.

“It is an irony that there is a content overdose on popular beaches in India yet there is a serious dearth of decision-enabling-content that makes for a strong pitch on ‘valid points to visit a particular beach.’ There are no studies or findings done from a pure tourism perspective that gives any kind of rankings for the beaches in India, a very much regular feature in the west. We wanted to fill this void. ” Asserted Mr. Rastogi.

“The concern for us was to have a delicate balance between tourism and ‘sustainable tourism. ’ IHR’s BSTI survey, conducted over a month with a sample set of more than 1000 people who are local stakeholders came out with some interesting findings. In the process it also completely shattered some of the traditional ‘myths’ associated with the popular beaches.”

“The BSTI ranking places Minicoy Beach in Lakshadweep Islands at the top followed by Varkala and Bekal beaches in Kerala, leaving behind more illustrious ones like the Beach No 7 in Havelock Island and the bunch from the ‘tourist paradise’ of Goa. The detailed findings are published in the new website from IHR titled beach.indiahotelreview.com declared Mr. Ankit Rastogi.”

On the concluding note Mr. Ankit Rastogi pointed out that as a responsible travel company IHR has its task cut cutout for future. “We want to share with tourists conclusive rankings for all the major tourism points in India. This is to be done with a dedicated ranking mechanism to arrive at a ‘tourism quotient’ taking BSTI survey as the baseline.”

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