Volume : 2, Issue : 2, February - 2013

Cultural and Heritage Tourism: With Special Reference to Elements and Variables of the Core of Cultural and Heritage Tourism

Navneet Kaur

Abstract :

Tourism has been a major social phenomenon, which is motivated by the natural urge of every human being for new experience, adventure, education and entertainment. The motivations for tourism also include social, religious and business interest. Tourism and leisure are perhaps the two nicest things in modern society, which helps to promote peaceful co–existence, pleasure of the individual and well being of the general public. It is a smokeless industry and it has its own direct and indirect effect on economy which regarded as effective instrument of economic development with understanding of social, cultural and political life of the society, which leads to a healthier global understanding. The importance of tourism as an instrument for economic development and employment generation, mainly in remote and backward areas, has been well documented the world over. This paper is an effort to establish the links between tourists and the heritage presented at destinations, in order to understand better what is termed as heritage tourism. The specific purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the relationship between the tourists and their perception is linked to their visitation patterns. It is based on the premise that the understanding and management of heritage tourism as social phenomenon should not be based solely on an arbitrary factor i.e., the presence of tourists. This paper is an effort to search for more subjective and subtle elements and variables that form the core of the Heritage Tourism. Heritage Tourism is simply represented by the number of the tourists at the heritage tourist attractions. This is a very objective and quantitative technique in order to gauge the popularity of the Heritage Tourism. What is more important is to establish relationship between the Heritage site on one hand and variables like awareness about the site, site attributes, perceptions and behavior of the tourists before, during and after visiting the heritage site.