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The hotel industry in India is going through an interesting phase. The industry has a capacity of 110,000 rooms. According to the tourism ministry, 4.4 million tourists visited India last year and at the current rate, the demand will soar to 10 million by 2010 to accommodate 350 million domestic travellers. The hotels of India have a shortage of 150,000 rooms fuelling hotel room rates across India. With tremendous pull of opportunity, India has become a destination for hotel chains looking for growth.

Due to such a huge potential available in this segment, several global hotel chains like the Hilton, Accor, Marriott International, Berggruen Hotels, Cabana Hotels, Premier Travel Inn (PTI), InterContinental Hotels group and Hampshire among others have all announced major investment plans for the country. The Government's move to declare hotel and tourism industry as a high priority sector with a provision for 100 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) has also provided a further impetus in attracting investments in to this industry.

It is estimated that the hospitality sector is likely to see US$ 11.41 billion rise in the next two years, with around 40 international hotel brands making their presence known in the country by 2011. Simultaneously, international hotel asset management companies are also likely to enter India. Already, US-based HVS International has firmed up plans to enter India, and industry players believe others like Ashford Hospitality Trust and IFA Hotels & Resorts among others are likely to follow suit.

Niche Tourism
The concept of 'niche tourism' has emerged in recent years in counter-point to what is commonly referred as 'mass tourism'. In a globalising world of increasing sameness, niche tourism represents diversity and ways of making difference. It plays on the pejorative connections that have accompanied the evolution of mass and package tourism and their, often cited, negative impacts in relation to environmental degradation and socio-cultural disturbance. For destination managers and planners seeking to utilise tourism as a mechanism for economic development, the niche tourism approach appears to often greater opportunities and a tourism that is more sustainable, less damaging and more capable of delivering high spending tourists.

The term niche tourism is largely borrowed from the term niche Marketing, which in turn has appropriated the niche concept from the language of the relatively recent discipline of ecology.

Tourists, as consumers have developed increasing levels of expertise and experience of being tourists. Whilst this developmental pattern of tourists may not always be linear or simplistic.

Figure 2: Niche Tourism Components

Types of Niche Tourisms
Niche tourism has broadly been divided into following components:

Cultural Tourism: Cultural tourism is the subset of tourism concerned with a country or region's culture, specifically the lifestyle of the people in those geographical areas, the history of those peoples, their art, architecture, religions, and other elements that helped shape their way of life. Cultural tourism includes tourism in urban areas, particularly historic or large cities and their cultural facilities such as museums and theatres. It can also include tourism in rural areas showcasing the traditions of indigenous cultural communities (i.e. festiv