BSTI – Beach Sustainable Tourism Index

In an effort to boost sustainable tourism and raise awareness of tourists IHR – IndiaHotelReview.com tried to evaluate 30 major public recreational beaches in India. BSTI or Beach Sustainability Tourism Index 2009 is a survey conducted over a month with a sample set of more than 1000 people who are local stakeholders in a broad canvass of popular beaches across the vast Indian coastline. The beaches were selected from the east to west, Konkan to Coromandel Coast, popular and anonymous, urban and in hinterland to do justice to the long coastline of India. Some of the beaches include Varkala in Kerala, Minicoy in Lakshadweep, Beach No 7 in Havelock Islands, Miramar in Goa, Swargdwar in Puri, Malpe in Udupi et al. The aim of the survey was to arrive at rankings 1 to 30 based on selected parameters based on a number of factors that kept a balance between concerns and pleasures negatives and positives. On the sensitivity front parameters like crime, safety, eco-unfriendliness, beach fauna were included, physical factors included colour of the sand, beach length, beach slope (underwater) and purely tourist-centric information like accessibility of the beach, amenities (including dustbin, shower), count of accommodation (including hotels, guesthouses and home stays) sports facilities to even kids amusement a critical but often ignored factor. The BSTI ranking places Minicoy Beach in Lakshadweep Islands at the top followed by Varkala and Bekal beaches in Kerala. The bottom three slots went to Calangute in Goa(28th), Serenity Beach in Puducherry(29th) and Poovar near Thiruvananthapuram finishing last(30th).Beach No 7 in Havelock Island often regarded as a dream destination ranks a distant 11th in the index. Out of the top five beaches from the tourist paradise of Goa only two (Miramar and Anjuna) figure in top 10.
Top ranked Minicoy in Lakshwadweep, the island of Corals is a spectacular white crescent-shaped beach that scored heavily on our parameters with least number of negative points to secure number one spot in our rankings. It is one of the few beaches studied by us that have a facility of shower right at the beach.
A lesser known beach to break into the top 10 was Malpe near the temple town of Udupi in Karnataka. It secured the 6th rank banking heavily on high scores in amenities, safety front and viewpoints front. Another factor came to light that as compared to urban beaches those situated on the outskirts fared better. For instance as compared to Ramakrishna beach located right at the city, Rushikonda located on the outskirts of Visakhapatnam got ranked higher. Urban beaches also had other lacunas, Marina Beach in Chennai fared worse when it came to the instances of crimes followed by Shanmugham beach in Trivandrum, Anjuna and Miramar both in Goa.
The factors taken into account to measure the safety quotient was presence of lifeboats, guards, police posts and proper signages. Detailed results can be viewed at http://beach.indiahotelreview.com

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