Marketing Religious Tourism Destination : Case study: The birth place of Gautama Buddha, Lumbini, Nepal

Lumbini is the birth place of Gautama Buddha who is the founder of Buddhism. Buddhism is the fourth largest religion in the world. There are about 350 million Buddhist people in the world and Lumbini is one of the important pilgrim places for them. Out of four major Buddhist pilgrimages in south Asia Lumbini is one of them. BodhGaya, Sarnath, and Kusinagar are situated in India and they attract many Buddhist pilgrims but comparing with those destinations Lumbini is not able to attract a reasonable number of visitors. The main aim of the thesis was to find out the better marketing tools and find the marketing area to focus to reach the target customers, analyzing from the present research of Lumbini to attract a significant number of visitors. Also here we will discuss the present scenario of Lumbini including, tourism attractions, tourism services and types of tourism. The quantitative research method was used here. Questionnaires were distributed to several visitors randomly and asked them how they knew about Lumbini and about attractions, accessibility, re-creation, accommodation, activities and price. The report analysed the present situation of Lumbini. Giving focus on the result, it will find which the areas to improve are and what kind of marketing tool should be used to achieve the goal