Abstract
Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries as well a provider of employments over to 100 million populations around the world. Niche tourism refers to strategy that specific tourism product personalized to meet the needs of a particular tourist segment. Hence Tea tourism has been identified as one niche Tourism segment emerged with novel concept of sustainable and nature based eco-friendly tourism. Research objective is to identify the potentials to promote Sri Lanka as a tea tourism destination with special reference to Badulla and Nuwara Eliya districts by investigating the tea tourists’ attitudes, expectations and destination attributes and local community involvement for tea tourism. Sample consists with 173 tea tourists and structured questionnaire and semi structured interviews were adopted in primary data collection. The numerous potentials have been identified which will be in capable of promoting tea tourism. Destination image building with the brand name of “Ceylon Tea”, global promotional campaigns with the collaboration of Social Media Marketing tools as well introducing sustainable tourism experience packages has been recommended.
Highlights
Travel & Tourism is one of the world’s largest economic sectors as providing direct employments over to 100 million as well enormous indirect employments for different sectors and regions (World Travel and Tourism Council)
Niche tourism refers to strategy that specific tourism product personalized to meet the needs of a particular tourist segment
Tea tourism has been identified as one niche Tourism segment emerged with novel concept of sustainable and nature based eco-friendly tourism
Summary
Travel & Tourism is one of the world’s largest economic sectors as providing direct employments over to 100 million as well enormous indirect employments for different sectors and regions (World Travel and Tourism Council). Niche tourism refers to how a specific tourism product can be personalized to meet the needs of a particular tourist segment as Tea tourism has been identified as one niche Tourism segment emerged. Tea could be stated as a beverage, a plant, an art, a meal service, an export, an agricultural product, an industry, a religion or a dedicated pastime (Yang, 2007) and tea is an integral part of food service (Jolliffe, 2007). A peripheral industry built up around tea focuses on the production of goods for a tea-loving public, including tea accessories, books on tea, and a variety of tea-themed gift wares. Tea combination has developed as an art (Shalleck, 1972) and in some societies, such as Japan, as a religion. The romance and history of tea and the experience of consuming tea is a pastime (Pratt, 1982) as includes collecting, either associated with the purchase of tea and related items such as teapots and teacups, or the seeking out and build-up of tea experiences, individually or as part of an organized tea tour
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
