Manisha Pandey

Co-Founder and Managing Director
Village Ways

Joined the family business of running a hotel inside the Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary in 2002. In 2004, Manisha and her husband along with other friends co-founded ‘Village Ways’ to help sustain the villages of the Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand , which were under serious threat of outmigration due to lack of livelihood opportunities. Currently holding responsibility as ‘Managing Director’ in Village Ways, Manisha has been working in the field of Responsible Village Tourism for the last 15 years. She has closely supervised the development of ‘Village Tourism Enterprises’ in villages of Indian Himalayan region (Uttarakhand state), Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Kerala and also the overseas project in Nepal. She has also has been working closely with the marketing team based in UK to link the Village Enterprises to the market, which is crucial for the sustainability of these projects. She is also involved in holiday product designing, pricing, sales and other commercial aspects to help the overall administration of the business. Under the guidance of International Centre of Responsible Tourism UK (Professor Harold Goodwin), she has been working on impact studies and has developed a simple system for collection of data from the communities who are engaged in Tourism activities. These studies have helped to show the economic impacts up to household levels. Manisha has also been working on government projects related to consultancy for development of community projects and also on training. Village Ways has set up a training centre in the Binsar Sanctuary (Uttarakhand), where training is provided to those interested in engaging responsibly in tourism activities in their villages.