Paradigms of Heritage Tourism Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Entrepreneurship in the tourism sector, a vast domain overarching from the highly elastic demand of tourism services to the highly inelastic niche tourism, the paper argues, requires more effort, and involvement of an individual than in other services industry; entrepreneur, whose vision and tenacity contributes towards creating a market space, even in saturated market segments. Amongst the many different categories of tourism, heritage tourism is an evolving niche segment. Heritage tourism implies the well-defined and deliberate act of tourism to places, peoples, programmes, and others which are known for their heritage, from known historical places of importance to little known urban or rural areas known for heritage craftsmanship and cultural forms. Heritage means cultural, historical, or any other significance (UNESCO) that may be attributed to a particular geographical area, monument, community, or any other social institutions. Heritage tourism has multiple actors - tourism and hospitality services providers, artisans, architects, artists, vocational workers, skilled and unskilled workers. A particular dance form, a unique hand-woven textile, a place of historic and religious significance, choose the entrepreneur - who may be a practitioner, a facilitator, or may be a catalyst, all different expression of entrepreneurial nature.