Ramayana Trail as a Cultural Tourism Product in Sri Lanka: New Paradigm for Destination Marketing

Tourism could consider as the most booming sector in service economy where the novel paradigms popular among tourism destination that leads for huge competition. Ramayana Trail is an untapped market, which symbolizes eminent synthesis of Sri Lankan and Indian cultural values. Ramayana Trail is featured novelty nature in tourism industry which was recognized by the least and crucial to promote as more than fifty sites were located in Sri Lanka with the ability to influence tourists for diversified experiences. The objective of the study to identify the potentiality to promote of Ramayana Trail as a cultural tourism product with special reference to Uva and central province through the investigation of tourist‘s profile, existing awareness and destination attributes. Sample size is 120 tourists and for data collection semi structured questionnaire and interview method were adopted. Findings reveal that the existing level of awareness is low among foreign tourists. Comparably Indian tourists are aware about the legend but not for the Ramayana sites. Attraction has been identified as the most significance destination attributes and promotion of Ramayana trail as a cultural tourism product has been recommended through government intervention and websites, blogs and social media marketing tools.

Cultural heritage tourism has long existed, but recent demographic, social, and cultural changes in the main source countries have led to an increasing number of new niche markets in destination countries, including culture-oriented holidays. Cultural heritage tourism is important for various reasons; positive economic and social impact, establishes and reinforces identity, preserve the cultural heritage, with culture as an instrument, facilitates harmony and understanding among people, supports culture and helps renew tourism (Norhasimah et al.2015). Niche markets could be directly focus on specific visitors willing to visit Ramayana sites as Ramayana trail has belonged to pre historical period, this has replete with cultural and historical values which can be posed for the visitors.

Research Problem
The study focused to identify existing level of awareness and destination attributes and key barriers and opportunities to promote Ramayana Trail. As a comparison, statistics of tourist arrival according to the purpose of visit there are 0.01 % tourists with the purpose of religious and culture (SLTDA, 2014). And it exhibit there are less number of tourist's arrival to Sri Lanka to visit cultural destinations although a cultural tourism is a booming sector in World wide. Since the tourism focuses to identify novel avenues to promote the sector, Ramayanaya Trail could be promoted as a cultural tourism product. Therefore this research will examine potentials to promote Ramayana trail to general market as a tourism attraction in Sri Lanka and also will identify opportunities and barriers to promote Ramayana trail as a cultural tourism product. Hence the Research questions of this study thereby are derived from the explained problem to identify promotion of Ramayana Trail as a cultural tourism product while considered current scenario.

Review of Literature
Legend is a part of culture and history of specific region. Ramayana, one of the two great epics of India is idealistic in the handling of human characters and scholars view the legend as a storehouse of ancient knowledge, Philosophy, religion, customs and rituals, polity, science, social life, geography, history, economics, code of conduct (Balambal, 2013).
According to the legend, Rawana is a tragic hero not a villain as Lankan populace valued cultural values greater than power or strength. Rama accepted Rawana as a Brahmin scholar in Sanskrit and a great king and ordered a cremation suitable for a great king and Brahmin.
Rawana is a chief character in Ramayana and is of immense moral and physical strength and there existed inscriptions and locations pertaining to Rawana, Rama, and Seetha in Sri Lanka (Jayasinghe, 2013). According to this Ramayana represents great cultural, historical and religious features and also this legend has framed around great three historical characters.
According to (Hofstede, 1997) Culture refers to the "cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving".
Further there are antagonistic believes in the society, as Indian culture identified king Rawana as an enemy while Sri Lankan as one of great kings in the history.
Cultural tourism is defined as 'visits by persons form outside the host community motivated wholly or in part by interest in the historical artistic, scientific or lifestyle/heritage offerings of a community, region, group or institution' (Silberberg, 2006). Within a modern tourism format the culture element, which is inherent or representative of tourism destinations, plays a vital role in attracting tourists or enhancing the value of heritage constructions. Cultural tourism began to be recognized as a distinct product category in late 1970's when tourism marketers and researchers realized that some people traveled specifically to gain a deeper understanding and knowledge of the culture or heritage of a destination. People are willing to exposure different cultural value by travelling to various cultural destinations (Tighe, 1986). Cultural tourism is considered as a sub segment of tourism related to the culture of a specific geographical area; lifestyle, religion, history and other factors. Cultural tourism consist tourism in major and large and historical cities and urban areas, and their cultural Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3877148 elements. It also contains the tourism in rural zones to show the rituals and civilizations of local cultural communities and way of their life and values (Prentice, 2001). Further cultural tourism is categorized among one of the five types of tourism and form of special interest tourism, where culture forms the basis of either attracting tourists or motivation people to travel (Mckercher & du cros, 2002). Cultural tourism also includes the experiential element by which means tourists want to get educated by experiencing culture in their journey. As a minimum, cultural tourism involves experiencing or having contact of differing intensity with the unique social fabric, heritage, and special character of places (Mckercher & du cros, 2002). Cultural heritage tourism viewed as travel anxious with experiencing cultural environments, including landscapes, the visual and performing arts, and special lifestyles, values, traditions and events. It is vital to stress that cultural heritage tourism involves not only tangible or visible heritage such as sites, colors, materials, and settlement patterns, but also intangible heritage such as societal structures, traditions, values, and religion (Norhasimah et al.2015). A cultural resource can be defined as any cultural feature, tangible (material) or intangible (non-material), available within a country, region or area, which makes a positive contribution to cultural tourism (Ivanovic, 2008). Cultural tourism resource is created by human being rather than a nature born. It involves the process of the development of history, science, life style, arts and other human creative achievement (Zhang, 2011) and represents features such as historical, arts, manmade creations. Cultural tourism encompass the unique features of a place which reflect its culture, history, or environment, and by their experiential nature, promote the rich tapestry of cultural traditions, ethnic backgrounds and landscapes (Copley & Robson, 1996). A cultural attest is not a cultural tourism product unless it transforms itself into products that could be consumed by tourists. But cultural tourism product must involve the cultural values through the transformation process. Ramayana Trail could be generating above both compositions because this trail has built with local cultural value, some monuments such as Seetha kotuwa, some people are worshiping king Rawana as a god. As Ramayana has a prehistorically values this would be educated people regarding pre historical period and this would be created imagination in tourist mind when they have aware about flow of the story such as king Rawana's vehicle dadhu Monara. This has created curiosity in people's mind and this is questionable Sri Lankan prehistory has a technological advancement to fly over air. This legend could be promoted by indicating eminent cultural values to tourists as legend has attractable features such as great story board, indicate human relationships, and indicate Indian and Sri Lankan rituals. By indicating these values this trail could be promoted to  (Ramayana Tours, 2016). Destinations can be defined as places which offer an amalgam of tourism products and services, which are consumed under a brand name of the destination.
Scholars viewed it as geographical regions, understood by visitors as unique entities with a core of six main provisions; Attractions, accessibility, available packages activities and ancillary services (Buhalis, 2009). Through the product related approach is considering about destination capabilities which are mentioned as (Hudson & Ritchie, 2006) the destination should contain with particular facilities to do tourism activities. Hence the study focus on promoting the Ramayana Trail by addressing destination attributes in current tourism destination practices to uplift socio-economic development of the residents in the tourism destination as a whole.

Research Methodology
The population is based on both demand and supply sides and was international tourists those who have arrived to Sri Lanka by year of 2016 January -August period has considered as demand side stakeholders where people involved operating in Ramayana sites has been considered for supply side (Community, tour guides, government, priest) in Central and Uva provinces. Sample size is 120 international tourists divided among two province based on Proportionate of Ramayana sites located in two province as table 1. For the supply side, four sites from Uva and two sites from Central province has considered with the 16 respondents as by taking two stake holders from each site.

Results and Discussion
Cronbach's Alpha Reliability Analysis has been proven the reliability as the overall alpha value is 0.772 is greater than the accepted level of 0.7. All five variables has been tested for reliability test as the Scaled analysis (five point Likert Scale) used to rate.

Graph 1-Distribution of region in Uva Province
Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3877148

Graph 3-Distribution of Purpose of visit
Among the sample of Uva Province, 74.67% of tourists were Europeans represented mainly the countries Netherland, UK, France and Germany,13.33% Australians, 9.33% from North and South America and Asia, about 1.3% (Graph 1).

Graph 2-Distribution of region in Central Province
As a comparison, among the sample of Central province (Graph 2), 62.22% of tourists were of tourists not willing.

Graph 5-Problems faced during travel to Ramayana sites
Out of total respondent (Graph 5), 80% of tourists have identified inadequate information and lack of guidance as main problems faced during the travel,15.83% lack of sanitary facilities and poor service of hotels 1.67%.

 Implementation
The attention of responsible authorities is comparatively low as no any official plan was implemented yet.

Conclusion and Recommendation
The objective of the study to identify promote Ramayana Trail as a cultural tourism product and the visitor profile, existing level of awareness regarding Ramayana Trail, opportunities and barriers to promote Ramayana Trail and most significant destination attributes has been taken in to consideration. When considering the exiting level of awareness most of tourists (48%) never heard about this legend and reveals still the awareness level considerably less. Awareness was the third and ancillary service is the fourth highest destination attribute.
Tourists were considered availability of telecommunication, availability of sanitary facilities and availability of safety and security had impact on promotion of Ramayana Trail. Amenities had the least impact on promotion than other four variables and availability of food/beverages and accommodation facilities of sites were consider lower than the other factors when promoting the trail. Ramayana Trail is a sophisticated niche market for Sri Lankan tourism industry and novelty nature would be plus point to promote among tourists. When considering about the percentage of tourists arrival to Sri Lanka, Indian tourists' percentage is high (SLTDA statistics) and Indians already aware of the legend and could be promote.
Although Indians are aware about the trail they are not aware on the Ramayana sites due to lack of promotion and information service. Involvement of local tour guides is need even though some guides are not willing to promote this due to lack of evidence. Accordingly Ramayana Trail need more promotion through internet sources; website, blogs, and social media.