Critical appraisal of aspect of behavior of country residents for tourist destination competitiveness of India and Singapore

Tourism today is a leisure activity of the masses. People today travel to international destinations to break the regular monotony of life. They are mainly attracted by either the scenic beauty of its nature or by fascinating leisure, sports and adventure activities offered by the destination. But the competitiveness of the destination is also affected by the behavior of country residents of the destination. The paper makes an attempt to compare the competitiveness of India as well as Singapore on behavior of country residents’ issue. The foreign tourists’ perception of various variables of this attribute of Indian tourism industry is compared with that of Singapore tourism which are based on different articles of destination competitiveness, the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report (TTCR) issued by World Economic Forum and also from various published media. Primary data through questionnaires containing 5 point Likert scale and secondary data from web resources and books are used in the paper. The findings show that the behavior of government officials, taxi/auto rickshaw drivers, level of education of service providers is found to be much better in case of Singapore and the society is also found to be more open and friendly. This finding is also supported by the secondary data as on the pillar of human resources of TTCI index, 2011 Singapore bags 2^nd position and India is on the 96^th position and on the pillar of affinity for travel and tourism industry Singapore secures 12^th position and India is poorly placed on 116^th position.