Abstract
The tourism industry in India is substantial and vibrant, and the country is fast becoming a major global destination. The present paper has taken an in-depth review of the promotional challenges in tourism industry and focused on the entrepreneurs in tourism business. The entrepreneurs in tourism industry are facing many challenges in promotion of their services. This study made an attempt to explore the solution to these challenges. The overall objective of the study is to find the problems faced by entrepreneurs in tourism industry in promoting tourism products and suggest ways and mean, for strengthening tourism sector for better promotion. To have the statistic data for the study, the questionnaires were distributed to the target respondent firms of Tour Operator and Travel Agency, as the result, 108 respondents answered the questionnaires. The collected date are coded, tabulated andsummarized. One- way ANOVA, Chi-square tests and Freidman test have been applied for analyzing the data. Findings revealed that all the tour operators and travel agents agreed that undertaking promotional activities is important. It is found that advertisement stands first in the tourism sector preferences of promotional mix followed by publicity, public relation, personal selling, referrals, and sales promotional mix followed by publicity, public relation, personal selling, referrals, and sales promotion. It was noteworthy that majority of them are strongly agreed with the statement ‘Marketing helps the organization to build image’.
Keywords: Promotional Activities, Tour Operator and Travel Agency, Entrepreneur, Tourism and
Challenges.
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