Kalpita Bhar Paul
Pertanika Journal of Tropical Agricultural Science, Volume 26, Issue 1, March 2018
Keywords: Ecotourism, imagination, imaginaries, nature tourism, Sundarbans
Published on: 20 Mac 2018
In present day tourism, ecotourism has gained significant popularity and is an avenue to foster synergy between economic, cultural, and ecological growth. This paper attempts to demonstrate how the ecotourism industry uses the power of human imagination to generate tourism imaginaries. By employing these two tools, ecotourism industry plants a very unique notion of 'nature' in tourists' minds, in which nature remains pristine and immaculate. Although this notion hardly matches the actual reality, ecotourism showcases a fabricated reality of tourist spots to fulfil tourist demands. By drawing examples from the flourishing ecotourism industry of the Sundarbans, through in-depth interviews of tourists and analysis of tour brochures, the stark differences between imaginaries and actual reality are documented. Finally, this paper concludes that what ecotourism attempts to offer through imaginaries and the primary objectives of this industry are self-contradictory and can only be attained through the power of imagination.
ISSN 1511-3701
e-ISSN 2231-8542