Branding Destinations in Banglaphone Regions of South Asia Through Literary Tourism

UNWTO (United Nations World Tourism Organization) has affirmed that cultural tourism comprises of 39% of total global tourism and cultivating cultural heritage of a place is one of the greatest components of global touristic activities. As a key element of cultural tourism literary tourism is playing a significant role to draw individuals whose literary interest draws them to visit destinations connected to literary causes in a list of ways – as being the backdrop of a fiction, birthplace of an author, place of living of a fictional character etc. Employing this platform of literary interest tourism operators are promoting places famous for their literary affiliation to groups of tourists using it as a marketing tool. The present study aims to investigate the status of such type of tourism in Bengali speaking or Banglaphone region of the world which is geographically located in entire Bangladesh and a part called West Bengal of neighboring India. This article studies in an exploratory manner the possibilities of attracting literary visitors by a list of destinations in the Banglaphone region and the way this potential can be employed as promotional tools by the destination management operators (DMOs), both governmental and nongovernmental. Thus, this research would also throw a light on the economic potential of Banglaphone places endowed with literary heritage.