Indian heritage tourism - a netnographic approach

Abstract

Heritage tourism in India is seeing many changes with the technology exposure. It can be seen in the past that the demand for heritage tourism in India may be decreasing due to the result of social desirability bias. This could have a camouflage effect for lesser market charm. An approach of netnography was made use of in the exploratory study. It handled 7324 online reviews from global tourists to extract qualitative observation into tourists’ level of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with respect to Heritage tourism in India. This was done with the aim of understanding the mindsets of the foreign visitors from a qualitative aspect. The netnographical approach was useful in capturing both favourable and unfavourable reviews. It was in fact observed that foreign travelers were intensely positive in relation to their experiences. This research highlights that there is incongruity between those people who actually take part in the heritage tourism experience and those people who do not. Many hidden reasons are discussed in this research.