In the past two decades backpacker tourism has grown vastly throughout both developed and developing world. Particularly to south and Southeast Asian countries the phenomenon of backpacking is not new, so to India, where it dates back to the 60's and 70's hippy drifters, to which backpacking is often associated. It has been since the publication of the Lonely Planet's 'Yellow Bible' ('Southeast Asia on a Shoestring') in 1975 that backpacking has gradually emerged as a mass travel style. Today popular travel-yourself literature cover almost every corner of the globe, serving a steady demand for 'off the beaten path' travel. Thereby to backpackers the developmental background of a destination plays a lesser role than to the mainstream tourist, who is demanding certain infrastructural arrangements. As a result backpackers are found in utmost remote and low developed locations that other tourists never reach. Thus backpacker enclaves have emerged in many places throughout the world, and not without effects on their hosting environments. While social impacts often carry negative connotations, hosting communities do usually appreciate backpackers for their economic contributions.

Objectives and Scope of this paper:

In recent years backpacker tourism has profoundly been studied in developed contexts, particularly Australia and New Zealand are to be seen the pioneering regions of independent travel research, having undertaken strenuous efforts to study the same within the past two decades. As a consequence both destinations have recognized the economic value of low budget travel to their countries and established backpacker tourism as high yielding segments within their national tourism markets. In both countries backpacking has since undergone shift from de-marketing to a marketing label.

Though in recent years international research has made numerous successful attempts to study backpacker tourism in less developed contexts, many tourism officials in third world destinations as yet refuse to accept the economic reach coming along with low-budget travel. Instead a majority of administrative instances promote upscale- and regulated forms of tourism to be the way forward, neglecting any concerns with regard to necessary infrastructure or initial investments. Though only a fraction of developing nations do actively restrict independent travel to their territories (e.g. Maldives, Bhutan), a majority at best tacitly ignores the phenomenon. Other cases have proven forceful discouragement from local authorities and government bodies. India is an example, though having a long tradition as a backpacker destination and as yet well reputing among international travellers, there are strong indications that tourism planners and authorities follow the common misbelieve that low budget equals low revenue tourism and begin displacing backpacker tourism, in particular from designated tourism priority zones.

At this point the present paper starts to assume relevance. It aims at proving the economic significance of international backpacker tourism in a third world context, particularly the economic development impacts coming along with this form of travel. Beside setting up an explorative backpacker profile of independent travellers in India it examines the case of a remote Indian traveller enclave including the local and regional economic developments directly and indirectly resulting from budget travel.

Basing on empirical research firstly a backpacker profile is being created, providing fundamental quantitative data on travellers in India and the study area itself. A second aim of this paper is to place the backpacker in India into an international context and identify similarities and differences to his counterpart in other regions of the world. Furthermore it follows the question of the existence of different types of backpackers in India. Hence, survey findings are being contrasted with data from other, international backpacker markets, as well as theoretic defining and distinction criteria. The identification of parallels farther allows an application of economic development criteria from other destinations onto the Indian context. The section therewith sheds light onto the demand side of India's contemporary budget travel market.

A qualitative approach has been chosen to run down on backpacker economic development impacts on Havelock in the Andaman Islands, representing the study area of this paper. Substantiated by data from the backpacker profile this second section portrays the case of a remote islands enclave, and how backpacker tourism impacts on its local economy. Again findings are being contrasted with a number of theoretic criteria, in order to emphasize their significance to the region. Farther the evolutionary path of backpacker enclaves is being followed and the question whether or not independent travel spearheads organized forms of tourism. This section particularly approaches the supply side of independent travel in India and the area of focus. Finally the paper aims at identifying factors for success of backpacker travel in India and the Andaman Islands.