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The purpose of this paper is to explore the composition of “tourism experience” of tourist visiting during the Nabakalebara event at Puri, India.

The paper applies data reduction using exploratory factor analysis on a sample of 300 respondents drawn during the event and condenses a set of 20 attributes into a list of five compressible factors.

The research shows that visitors visualise tourism experience as a combination of five factors: education, entertainment, esthetics, escapism and ease of facilities. They assigned different weightage in terms of significance to each of these factors. Internal configuration of these factors also reveals interesting patterns.

A non-probability sampling method is applied in this research. Future studies should replicate the research in different social, economic and geographical context to see if the factor composition and structure remain unchanged.

Organisers should focus on improving ease of facilities. Disproportionate expenditure on adding to other factors is not expected to yield matching dividends.

The study assumes significance as this kind of event used to happen on every 15 years. This attracts millions of visitors. The paper explores the expectation of visitors.

This paper is among the few works done on understanding tourism experience during the Nabakalebara at Puri, India. It adds significantly to the meagre body of knowledge in the area of tourism experience.