Kalaripayattu

Exploring Intangible Heritage Marketing in Tourism: A Case Study of Kalaripayattu

This chapter investigates the potential of Kalaripayattu as a tourism product. The study adopted interview method both personal and telephonic to extract primary data from practitioners and tourists. The study result shows that various facets of Kalaripayattu practices provide scope for visual engagement, psychological engagement, spiritual/wellbeing engagement, therapeutic engagement, engagement in specialized treatment, and engagement in combat and self-defense applications. These engagement are found to be appropriate to develop tourism products which could meet the general, wellness, cultural, as well as health tourism sectors. Study further investigates the impeding factors, while developing Kalaripayattu as a tourism product and suggested strategies to overcome the same. The study also suggests that the contemporary marketing practice can create a vibrant market for Kalaripayattu, and thereby, this ancient martial art could become a unique selling proposition (USP) in the tourism market.