Multidisciplinary approach for sustainable tourism: case study in Kandy,world heritage city, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Tourism in Sri Lanka is based on culture and nature. Sri Lanka has a growing tourism industry and the country’s tourism revenue reached USD 4 billion in December 2017. Sustainable Tourism is a concept promoted by the World Tourism Organization (WTO) in 1998. It stresses the necessity to promote tourism development catering to the requirements of tourists and host communities while preserving the nature and paving the way for future development. Tourism industry has positive as well as negative impacts on the environment and local communities. It is important to have a multidisciplinary approach to understand long term effects of tourism to a host destination. Kandy is known worldwide as an attractive tourist destination. Managing as well as planning sustainable tourism development is not easy when there are multiple groups and industries using the same resources in a conflicting manner. Thus, there is a necessity for a sustainable approach to tourism which benefits the environment, the host community as well as Sri Lanka’s economy. Methods for implementing sustainable tourism practices have been under-researched. There is a gap between research, reality and normative approaches, especially, in the process of policy implementation as there are conflicts in the attempt to resolve diverse goals of key actors. Challenges faced by Kandy in sustainable tourism development are interlinked, such as the conversion of the natural environment as a commercial product for tourism marketing. In this endeavor, a single approach cannot address diverse challenges. Hence, a multidisciplinary method is necessary to address the issues by combining theory from public policy, marketing and tourism disciplines. Thus, an overall performative approach; a combination of three separate approaches such as Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework, Tourism Area Life Cycle Model and a Marketing Systems Theory are necessary to study the policy processes and to develop institutional arrangements over a period of time to gain insight on how sustainable practices in tourism can be best adopted.