Journal of African Development

Tourism, which involves traveling to holy places is one of the most ancient means of transportation in India, but the sacred landscape of Rohilkhand region of Uttar Pradesh is still under-documented in the hospitality literature. The present paper has taken up the subject of the role of the hotel industry in pilgrimage tourism to study the key pilgrimage sites of Rohilkhand and perception of the pilgrims in respect to these sites. The structured questionnaire comprising of twelve 5-point Likert items was administered to 300 pilgrims at Bareilly, Moradabad, Badaun, Rampur and Pilibhit. Data were analysed using SPSS style analysis which is reliability test (Cronbach's alpha), exploratory factor analysis, one sample t-test, independent samples t-test, one way ANOVA, correlation, and multiple regression. Three dimensions were found (Site richness, accessibility and amenities, promotion and hotel linkage; cumulative variance = 65.3%). In support of H1, the pilgrims rated site richness significantly higher than neutral (M = 3.88, p < .001), but accessibility and amenities were only marginally higher than neutral (M = 3.10). Women rated accessibility and amenities as lower than men (p = .009) and overall satisfaction was not different across religion and the three dimensions together accounted for 45.4% of the variance in overall satisfaction. The results showed that the pilgrimage capital of Rohilkhand is acknowledged but inadequately served and the hotels, promotion and basic amenities are the levers that can change the pilgrimage source into a satisfied and repeat pilgrim