Role of Hotels and Resorts to Promote Ancient Ayurveda through Health Tourism: A Special Reference to Odisha

Abstract

Health Tourism is one of the emerging segments of travel and has gained remarkable fame to India for attracting tourists to cater their health as well as relaxation needs. Even though a new phenomenon; it is almost surely to be a major source of income for the country. Ayurveda has been the USP of health tourism to offer a complete package of travel experiences with psychological, physical and spiritual wellbeing. Presently alternative therapy and herbal treatment is widely popular globally and makes India a major tourist attraction. Hopefully, within few years India will be the most preferred destination for best of the health services with holistic healing therapies. Thus, endorsing Ayurveda through health tourism provides a new dimension to the hospitality and tourism in India itself. The main purpose of the paper is to focus on recent developmental trends in health tourism in India for promoting holistic therapy- Ayurveda in global context. The study highlights the implementation of ancient therapies in various hotels and resorts of Odisha as an ancillary service to provide the guest utmost satisfaction.The scope of the study only focuses on promoting Ayurvedic remedies as a significant element of health tourism in hotels and
resorts of Odisha. Based on the data collected through secondary sources, this paper makes an assessment of the extent of social awareness, innovativeness and responsiveness of tourism sector for marketing Ayurveda. In the concluding section, limitations of the study have been discussed and recommendations provided for undertaking more detailed investigations in the area.