The Potential of Kandy for Cultural Heritage Tourism Development: Enhancing the Sustainability

Abstract

Cultural heritage tourism has a tremendous impact on enhancing the sustainability. The sacred city of Kandy can be identified as one of the UNESCO world heritage sites in Sri Lanka and it has become a popular destination among the domestic and the international tourists. Kandy is the last kingdom of Sri Lanka which has a rich Sinhala Buddhist tradition with tangible and intangible attractions. Most of the tourists travel to Kandy to explore the experience of religious and cultural values. Apart from that, there are many stakeholders supplying their service to tourists at the destination. Also, when promoting Kandy, we want to consider the environmental, economic and socio-cultural sustainability and minimize the risk of arising the issues according to those sectors. Through the research expects to identify the potentials of cultural heritage tourism in Kandy and how should we enhance the sustainability within the sectors of economic, socio -cultural and environmental. As the specific objectives of the research are to organize a proper program in socio economic aspect of the host community. The study reveals the comprehensive analysis of cultural resources in Kandy. The empowerment of community and the other stakeholders of the cultural heritage is the key to address long-term sustainability in any of the cultural heritage destination. Therefore, the researcher is focusing on how to achieve the sustainability in Kandy with the development of cultural heritage tourism. And more consideration goes to minimize the issues thereby promote the Kandy as a sustainable cultural heritage tourism destination. The research is conducted on both qualitative and quantitative methods, where primary and secondary sources are referred in data collecting and the sample of 50 tourists and 50 community members in Kandy randomly selected and SWOT analysis were used to identify the sustainability level in Kandy for the research