A Study on Customers Preferences towards Landscape Features of Agri-tourism in Tamil Nadu

The agricultural landscape is the base for agri-tourism development. This paper focuses on customer preferences for agricultural landscape features when participating in agri-tourism. The prime objective of the study includes identifying the attractive features of agricultural landscapes and comparing those features across a category of customer's annual family income, family size, tour frequency and levels of farming and linkage. Data were collected in farm resorts located in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. Forty customers were randomly selected as respondents in ten resorts with total arrival of 400 sample customers using a well-developed questionnaire. General characteristics of respondents and customers preferences towards landscape features were collected. Multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) were conducted to know about the comparison of selected variables with landscape features in agri-tourism. Results show that customers liked mostly natural features followed by agricultural and cultural features. MANOVA shows significant differences across selected segments such as annual family income, family size, tour frequency and levels of farming and linkage. Imparting customer-preferred features like more natural features will increase the customer visit to agri-tourism. By this study, agri-tourism farms can increase their customer level of satisfaction by knowing the desired needs of the customer.