When India’s world of heritage comes home to live another day, where every stone has a story and every tourist becomes a time traveller, it is never too late to bring focus to Indian heritage as a viable tourism product.
Heritage and India have been and will continue to shock and wow tourists from across the world. Every city and town, every village and corner, you will find a monument or an intangible attribute that has all the markings of making memories of a journey well-travelled. UNESCO, in its wisdom, has accorded 42 sites in India the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A rather minuscule number, considering the rich heritage the country is blessed with. We can easily add another 100 of them over the next decade if the government supports such an initiative, albeit on the lines of Viksit Bharat!
Speaking with one official of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) a few years back, who casually remarked that the department is very wary as regards indulging in any major excavation work should they find something of interest and thereon, they spend more time in search of funds to execute, excavate and emerge with another masterpiece of our ancestors! Even the venerable UNESCO World Heritage site of Nalanda has been excavated to less than 10% of its scale.
As per the press release issued by the ministry, “The ASI operates six dedicated excavation branches located at Nagpur, Delhi, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Vadodara and Mysore, which are mandated to carry out archaeological exploration and excavation works annually. The budget allocation for exploration and excavation has witnessed a substantial increase under the Government of India. In 2024-25, an amount of ₹15.00 crore has been allocated under this head—an increase of about 2.3 times over the allocation of ₹6.53 crore in 2014-15. ” This is hugely underbudgeted and is a matter of concern, as ASI protects and maintains approximately 3,698 centrally protected monuments and archaeological sites across India. Unless more resources in terms of manpower and money are allocated to the conservation of heritage monuments, India’s heritage will be at the mercy of encroachers and bounty hunters. State-level initiatives and state archaeological departments are even less funded.
As the government, especially one which has taken it upon itself to create new narratives to reinforce India’s civilizational image, it has been a huge letdown!
The world of heritage and tourism is so connected at the hip as much as a sculptor is to his muse as much as he is to his discerning voyeur. A monument to experience will forever be the inspiration for a sculptor or a painter to practice their trade. The National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States defines heritage tourism as “travelling to experience the places, artifacts, and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past,” and “heritage tourism can include cultural, historic and natural resources.”
The key proof of a continuously living civilisation is in its voluminous Virasat in the form of its heritage, which is there to touch, feel and experience from almost every era! India probably has more historical monuments per square metre than any other nation on earth. Every dynasty, irrespective of whether it was home-grown or from the invaders, has left its mark in the form of its heritage value.
Showcasing monuments or intangible heritage will always be a destination’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition). No two monuments are alike in their historical significance and contribution to their tourism value.
As monuments bring in a heritage value to a destination, it is the story that brings in the experience. As stories and the storytellers make any destination memorable and add value as a discerning tourist, it is for those in the tourism industry to go niche.
I came across this release issued by Canada-based ‘Bestway Tours & Safaris’ promoting ‘The Beatles in India Tour,’ which claims that free-spirited travellers can ‘relive’ part of the 1960s and discover wondrous India as The Beatles did on their life-changing 1968 visit there, on ‘The Beatles in India Tour.’ ‘ The 18-day tour will be led by Emmy Award-winning film producer and director Paul Saltzman, who stayed with and exclusively photographed The Beatles during their visit to India. “The Beatles wrote 48 songs in 7 weeks on that trip—the single most creative period in their illustrious career,” said Saltzman. Do go over some fascinating promotional videos on YouTube.
The fully escorted tour will visit Rishikesh and other spiritual and special Indian sites where The Beatles came together and will meet Indian musicians who know and have performed with members of the group. It includes three days in Rishikesh, a holy city on the Ganges River, which is a gateway to the Himalayas, where The Beatles spent considerable time, and a visit to the former ashram where The Beatles meditated. Travellers will meet Indian classical musician, composer, and Grammy Award winner Ravi Shankar, who taught George Harrison of The Beatles to play the sitar, and visit Ajit Singh, a famous Vichitra Veena player who also performed with Harrison. There will be visits to the historic “Pink City” of Jaipur, Udaipur, the holy city of Haridwar, Mumbai, the capital city of New Delhi, and Agra to see the magnificent “Taj Mahal.” Optional yoga sessions, white-water rafting, and spa treatments can add to the aura.
What differentiates the above package from the regular run-of-the-mill ones that float around is its ability to create an added ‘experience factor’ for the discerning, and it will surely cost about three times the regular package to India. A bit of research and creativity will add more value to bottom lines and yields than playing the number game. About 17 million foreign tourists visited India in 2018, while the domestic traveller reached over half a billion. With the numbers going south the world over, thanks to the ongoing super tearjerker going by the name of Covid 19, travel companies and professionals must be creative and discover new sources of inspiration to design ‘experiences’ for high-value special interest travel individuals and groups.
Travel companies & DMCs focusing on pure numbers will find it difficult to sustain the recession and the competition. Special interest travel in India can be fun, diverse, and highly profitable. The biggest advantage is that there are a few parables, thus less competition. Indians are traditionally great storytellers and will find it easy to take an interest (whether it is based on history, architecture, adventure, wildlife, education, music, Commonwealth World War graves, etc.) and add value to it by creating a marketable destination package around it. We do not have to go a long way to search for inspiration when we are surrounded by so much around us at our doorsteps. Small and medium enterprises, which cannot match the scales of rates and reach of big multinational travel companies, will find specialising in creating customised and special interest travel more satisfying and profitable than catering to the rate race to bring numbers and wafer-thin margins.
The downside of niche travel is the process of finding a market for your created product, which is where you live with a longer gestation from the time of ‘developing the product’ to ‘marketing’ to being a ‘business,’ which is longer than traditional, ready-made packages. The quality of research used to develop your special interest product and the end user will determine the higher yield he eventually gets for it. New dawn customers will remunerate you for your expertise and knowledge in catering to their interests.
Wikipedia says, “In marketing, product differentiation (also known simply as ‘differentiation’) is the process of distinguishing the differences of a product or offering from others to make it more attractive to a particular target market. This involves differentiating it from competitors’ products as well as one’s own product offerings. The old-fashioned marketing ideology of creating a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) still works most of the time.
There are some interesting little tours in the cities of Bengaluru and Mysore with varied themes that have created interest in the expat community here, international delegations, students, tourists, and even residents, who found another dimension to this city, which oscillated wildly from being a once pensioners’ paradise to the home of the quintessential filter coffee, masala dosas, and some of the friendliest brews!
Use your creative instincts to research and identify, for instance, a ‘Theme for Your Dream’ experience package. Titled after the singing legend Cliff Richard, who was born in King George Hospital, Victoria Street, in Lucknow, on October 14, 1940. How about that for a theme to get cracking on! (‘Theme for Your Dream’ is a hit Cliff Richard number from the early seventies). Nostalgia is the new opium for the heritage buffs from around the world.
With every destination around the world, when the going gets tough, the tough go domestic! Mere sloganeering or having the prime minister having to push discerning travellers to travel within is not enough. We have to sensitise state governments to reach out to markets within to have an impact! The attempt to reach out to heritage travel markets is not a smooth highway, though, but it sure commands enough respect to reach out to a market closest to hearts and proximity alike!