Prospects and Challenges of Community Based Tourism in Heritage and Sculpture Village Shivarapattana

Abstract

Sculpture tourism is a form of tourism which includes exploring different places associated with sculpture and learning about it first hand. Shivarapattana is one of the heritage and sculpture villages famous for stone sculptures. Located in the Malur Taluk of Kolar District in Karnataka, it is surely a place worth visiting especially for a sculpture enthusiast. The main occupation of eighty percentage of the local community here works on crafting idols mostly in stone. The village is a non-descript rural tourism village in Karnataka. Community-based tourism can help the village to bring up entrepreneurial business opportunities among the local community and enhance rural development, subsequently helping the villagers realize reasonable economic returns on the investment and reducing the economic leakages. The focus and aim of this study are to know about the significance of community-based tourism in promotion of sculpture tourism and also to identify prospects and problems faced by the people involved in marking this sculpture village as a prominent rural destination in the tourism map of Karnataka. To complete the study and to derive the necessary findings data has been collected through questionnaire. For analysis, relevant statistical tools were used.