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Abstract
Considered as one of the chaar-dhaams (holiest four) of India, Puri is famous for being the adobe of Lord Jagannath. It is the most visited destination in the state of Odisha. It serves as a get-away spot and a place with highest religious importance for the residents of Odisha. Due to widespread pandemic, lockdowns and outbound restriction, Puri along with its tourism stakeholders have suffered an unprecedented decline in footfall. Travellers have shown travel avoidance behaviour coupled with lack of travel intentions across the globe in the current situations. This study identifies the factors which influence the post-pandemic Puri travel intentions through an empirical approach. An extended TPB model was proposed with predictors like attitude, subject norms, perceived behavioural control and past Puri travel behaviour regressed against the criterion. A statistical data analysis was performed using SPSS on a sample data of 327 respondents to verify the hypothesis. The study will help the tourism partners and collaborators along with Odisha government to devise and implement strategies to attract existing and new travellers of Odisha and re-flourish the sector as a whole. It will also guide researchers of tourism to assess domestic travel with a different perspective in light of pandemic.
Keywords: Pandemic, Odisha, Travel, Puri, travel intention, post-pandemic travel
Introduction
Situated on the Eastern coast on the shore of Bay of Bengal, Puri is one of the four most sacred and celebrated religious places for Hindus (Chandan et al., 2021). The capital city of Bhubaneswar, along with Puri and Konark form an explicit tourism triangle for the domestic tourists of Odisha. As per the data published by Government of Odisha in 2020, every year millions of traveller and pilgrims visit Puri to get a glimpse of Lord Jagannath, enjoy the vast beach side and other tourist engagements in and around Puri. In any case, the new episode of COVID-19 pandemic shook the actual groundwork of the travel industry and journey in Puri. Furthermore, every time it attempts to resuscitate, another wave caused by a new variant of the deadly virus disturbs the harmony and equilibrium of the travel synergy.
The ongoing pandemic has increased the vulnerability of the hospitality sector (Altinay and Arici, 2021). The risk of contraction of COVID-19 topped up with...