Tourism Industry In Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, tourism is growing rapidly due to the scenic beauty of the country, wildlife, beaches, heritage, sports and adventure activities and the cultural importance (Beirman, 2003). The tourism industry in Sri Lanka mainly consists with the foreign tourism and the domestic tourism.
The foreigners are attracted to Sri Lanka due to the natural beauty and the climate that the country has. They use varieties of tour packages offered by the organisations, online bookings for hotels etc. to plan their stay in Sri Lanka (Buultjens et al, 2005). As shown in Figure 2.1, the tourist arrival from the foreign countries is increasing over the past years in Sri Lanka. It is noted that the majority of the foreign tourists are from India whereas the

In addition to the, there are informal accommodation places also available for guests in private houses as well as bungalows (Bastakis et al, 2004). The tourism industry in Sri Lanka has greatly contributed to the economy of Sri Lanka by making generating employment for people in Sri Lanka and earning of foreign exchange. Further, the tourism industry has been able to contribute to the other industries such as banking, medical and pharmaceutical, communication and media industry etc. as it has direct interconnections on receiving and delivering goods and services to these sectors (Wickramasinghe and Takano, 2010).
In addition, there is a significant improvement can be seen in the domestic tourism in Sri Lanka (Hall, 2012). The purposes of the domestic tourism have been identified as pilgrimages, study works, and family holidays as well as sightseeing. Moreover, during the weekends and school vacations, there is a significant increase in the numbers of domestic tours in Sri

These types of people like meeting different people from foreign countries or people with different cultures. Such tourists expect good hotels and food instead of seeking for modern or chained hotels as their expectation is to get a complete freedom while exploring the area by making their own arrangements on choosing different activities and tourist attractions (Litvin, 2006).
The second category of the tourists defined in Plog's model is the Psychocentric (The Repeater) type. The Psychocentric tourists are not adventuresome like Allocentric and they have a preference in returning to familiar travelling destinations where they can relax. As they are returning to the same place, the types of the food and the activities that they have to perform are known to them. Therefore, this type of tourists prefers to stay at typical accommodation and to eat at family type restaurants (Chandler and Costello, 2002).
The 3rd type of the tourists are the Mid-centric (Combination) type which represents the tourists who swing between the Allocentric and Psychocentric types described above (Huang and Hsu,