Indigenous Tourism in India: Evaluating the Strengths of Mithila Painting Art and Heritage and Suggesting Integrated Marketing Development Approach for Sustainable Promotion

Abstract

Since many generations, the folks of Mithila, more specifically, the womenfolk have been creating a vigorous and distinct style of painting, known for its free hand skating and use of natural colures, carry forwarded from one to another generation through „mother‟s-to-daughters‟ tradition. There is a need to investigate the appearance of the art form to develop as tourism resource/product and address the promotional and marketing needs of Mithila Painting. A descriptive approach of the study adopted, the available literature reviewed and categorised in different symmetric groups to explore the likelihood of Mithila Painting as resources for the development of tourism, promotion, and marketing in the region. In addition, in order to suggest marketing strategies for the promotion of art form, this paper attempted to evaluate internal (the strength & weakness) and external factors (opportunity & threats) of Mithila Painting (as a product), and for this purpose secondary data, relevant literature and researcher‟s observation applied to explore the marketing prospective of the art. The study reveals needs for integrated marketing approach, which recognizes potentials of Mithila Painting along with other resource and contribute to tourism development in the region. Moreover, it is quite obvious to rely on „locally available resources‟ regional resources, identification of potential resources as tourism product-mix, promotion and strategic marketing of unique cultural products, specifically, Mithila Painting as one of the burgeoning resources to tourism development in the region.