Agro-tourism in Punjab - A cultural transformation

A number of countries have transformed their economies by developing their tourism prospective. Tourism has great capacity to generate large-scale employment and additional income sources to the skilled and unskilled. Today the concept of traditional tourism has been changed. Some new areas of the tourism have been emerged like Agro-Tourism. Promotion of tourism would bring many direct and indirect benefits to the people. Agro-tourism is an innovative agricultural activity related to tourism and agriculture both. It has a great capacity to create additional source of income and employment opportunities to the farmers. Punjab is one of the major tourist centres in the India and there is large scope and great potential to develop agro-tourism. The paper aims to examine the importance of agro-tourism development in Punjab and to define a suitable framework for the of agro- tourism centres in the view of marginal and small farmers. Further, an attempt has been made to identify the challenges of the agro-tourism and suggest effective measures to establish and promote the operations of agro-tourism.