| Pub. Date | : March, 2020 |
|---|---|
| Product Name | : The IUP Journal of Brand Management |
| Product Type | : Article |
| Product Code | : IJBRM10320 |
| Author Name | : Sabari Shankar R |
| Availability | : YES |
| Subject/Domain | : Marketing |
| Download Format | : PDF Format |
| No. of Pages | : 10 |
According to the Indian Tourism Statistics Report 2018, 20 million tourists across the world are expected to tour India. Though at pinnacle, Indian tourism industry requires accelerated research on branding the destinations in the global context, which not only elevates the brand value of the destinations but also boost local economies and Foreign Direct Investments. This paper is a part of a major research and aims at understanding whether emerging spiritual attractions in the district of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, India, create a potential space for branding the destination as spiritual destination. Data was gathered from 448 tourists through a structured questionnaire and SPSS has been employed for analyzing and deriving the findings. An interpretation has been made based on the results derived from Cross-Tabulation and Analysis of Variance. One of the most notable findings is: Coimbatore is also perceived as a spiritual destination by different nationals. It is critical to note that the destination also possesses other image aspects. However, for specifying the objective as to whether the selected geographical location is also perceived as spiritual destination, this paper has portrayed the aspect of spirituality.
Spiritual tourism has been on the rise among different national tourists. The stimulating growth of spiritual experience and motivation has paved the way for emerging spiritual destinations (Kale, 2004). Changing lifestyle of people, motive to experience peace, soulfulness and meaningful reality, etc. have been the portrayed as the most influencing reasons for the evolution of search in spirituality (Maclean et al., 2004). Though there are fecund theories differentiating spiritual tourism and religious tourism, there has been a common perspicacity about those two terms. Religious tourism focuses on visiting temples or destinations of religious importance, whereas spiritual tourism is more about seeking the elements of soul, peace and harmony. Despite the tradition, culture and values, spiritual factors in tourism have greater potential in tourism industry (Mittroff and Denton, 1999). The need for spiritual experience has been increasing among people in the last two decades, and Indian destinations have high potential to satisfy the tourists motivations and tourism needs (Shankar, 2019). This paper aims at understanding the significance of the destination, Coimbatore-which is emerging in global tourism market as a spiritual destination. A deeper understanding of how tourists of different demographics perceive the destination as a spiritual tourism spot is provided.