An identification of the involvement of British colonial architecture to the tourism industry in Sri Lanka: Special reference to Colombo region

Abstract

In 1815 the British Colonizers established their regime in the Dutch Ceylon. Although the colonial architecture scenario was stared during the era of Portuguese, the city of Colombo is massively contained with the British architectural attractions such as the National Museum, Old Parliament building, Townhall building, and Colombo old lighthouse, etc. Most of the research publications on colonial architecture are majorly emphasized on the preservation of the post- colonial attractions. Therefore, the researcher tends to identify the involvement of colonial architectural attractions to the tourism industry in the Colombo region. Also, designing a promotional plan to attract international tourists to British colonial architectural attractions can be taken as the sub-objective of this particular study. The secondary data such as books, research papers, magazines and reports were used to identify the involvement of architectural attractions to the tourism industry in Colombo and the primary data was used to design a development plan by randomly selecting 50 international tourists in the Colombo area through field visits and interviews. British colonial attractions in Colombo are highly involved in the tourism industry in Sri Lanka since it attracts a large number of tourists for its architectural values and skills of their ancestors. Organizing railway tours to colonial attractions from Colombo to Kandy since the whole railway system was built by the era of British regime, planning tours to visit British ancestors' cemeteries, giving opportunities to visit inside of the colonial attractions and upgrading websites and documentaries can be identified as the recommendations to the development plan for further incensement of the arrivals of international tourists to particular attractions.