An exploratory study on Indian traditional hospitality "Atithi Devo Bhawah" in Uttarakhand's rural areas post-pandemic using data science.

India the land of art and culture has always been the centre of tourism since ages and people welcome and serve their guest as a god as they believed in "Atithi Devo Bhava" which means "Guest is like God". Also government providing many subsidies and incentives on making people entrepreneur and encouraging hotel and tourism industry to come up with the best ambience and hospitality for their guest. Hospitality industry providing lots of opportunity in terms of job as well as revenue for development of states like Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand etc. Tourist places are mostly situated in the extreme interiors of rural areas lead by local entrepreneurs, where life is itself a challenge to deal with the extreme climatic conditions, not well-structured accommodations, poor safety guards and lack of medical facilities that are all intrinsic to meet the basic living standards. In Uttarakhand, such rural areas include religious sites Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath, Chopta, Chakarata, etc along with some semi and well-developed cities like Haridwar, Rishikesh, Dehradun, Nainital, etc which all remain flooded with tourists in the season. In this COVID-19 phase, the whole industry has suffered badly and left everyone bewildered to make any decision for the future. Central and the state governments had updated some and will update several guidelines and policies for the tourism industry in the coming days. Hotels with good financial conditions and market values can easily adopt new SOP's and technologies to deal with the situations after the pandemic, but it will not be the same for the small or local entrepreneurs. This study covers the current and post COVID-19 problems faced by small and local entrepreneurs of Uttarakhand and proposals and plans needed by them to boost their business and tourism with the same theme of Atithi Devo Bhava. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]