Tourism in Himachal Himalayas: Global Perspective

Sport Tourism as an emerging segment of the world’s largest and fastest growing industry has broadened its scope due to the growing interest for unusual holiday different from the conventional, which has been accompanied with wide variety and availability of travel products. With regard to adventure sport tourism, the basic spatial reference is a site, mainly influenced by destination technical factors. Himalayas being an ideal adventure sport destination, Billing in the Kangra Valley of Himachal Himalayas, due to its technical supportive strength, is recognised by Fédération International de l’Aviation (FAI), who have also granted it a category - II status in international ranking for aero spots. The International hang-gliding Competition was held in the year 1984, since then a number of events have been organised, some of the international level competitions were held in the year 1992,1995 and 1998. Since 2002, the pre-world cup have been successfully organised in a row. In light of growing demand and popularity of the site, an attempt through this study has been made to evaluate Billing as an aero sport tourism destination from the pilot’s perspective. The conclusions suggest that presence of various aero sport technical factors is a prerequisite for an ideal aero sport tourist destination. The study offers strategies, ways and options to improve the existing support structure for developing aero sport tourism.