Digital Conservation: Unravelling Tourists' Expectation from Online Amenities of Sunderbans Tiger Reserve, India

Abstract

Digital technology has transformed the basic operations in all segments of the industry by increasing efficiency and reachability. The transformation has made major contributions in the field of conservation through tourism, online ticket booking system being one of the major enablers. Digitization has led to automation of multiple aspects and hence cutting down on costs and increase accountability. The booking process is utilized in the tourism sector to control influx of tourists. Its integration into the platform assists in linking conservation efforts to tourism, which contributes to digital conservation and smart tourism. This paper studies the expectation regarding online booking system amenity from tourists visiting Sunderbans Tiger Reserve, India. The primary data was collected from 250 tourists in November 2020. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis and MANOVA was applied to test the hypothesis. The results suggest that the tourists have a positive expectation and are very happy with the introduction of online booking system amenity. The findings also suggest that there is no significant difference between tourists' gender, education and marital status when considered for their expectations of online booking system amenity.