Tourist Board to focus on alternative tourism

by Ramani Kangaraarachchi

The Sri Lanka Tourist Board has identified "Alternative Tourism(AT) in its 2005 long term vision of 'Beyond Beaches".

The idea is to change the image of Sri Lanka from a cheap and cheerful mass tourism beach destination to a more sophisticated destination for Alternative Tourism such as eco, agro, nature, sports and adventure, culture, heritage, health, tourism, to promote community based tourism and develop sustainable SME tourism business to diminish rural unemployment in some areas by 5 per cent in three years and to increase the percentage of total tourists that come to Sri Lanka for alternative forms of tourism from the current 5% to 10% in the next 3 years and up to 30% by the year 2015 without damaging the environment or the nature experience.

The Alternative Tourism Value Chain Core Group of the Value Chain Promotion Component (VCP) of GTZ Integration in partnership with the International Trade Centre (ITC) Geneva has defined Alternative Tourism (AT) as any kind of tourism other than sun and beach or mass tourism. It is more for the individual traveller who wants to explore a country because of its nature, culture, sport and adventure facilities.

Coordinator of the AT Core Group Wilja Witcombe said that since its creation in early 2004 the group has been working on this alternative mass tourism and now it has been recognized as a business alternative by SLTB also as a tool to create more jobs, establish cross linkages to other industries, help to protect and sustainably preserve the environment and raise the awareness of local people and tourists about the value of bio diversity.

Witcombe said that the three regional workshops conducted for over 200 local tourism policy makers at Hambantota, Bandarawela and Habarana by AT Core Group gave an encouraging feed back.

Also the six day training programme conducted by the SLTB for 47 eco tour guides has made a tremendous positive change in them where they look at eco tourism in completely a different perspective.

The purpose of the strategy of AT sector is four fold. Firstly to explain how the sector can become a major contributor to enhance the perception of the country as a tourist destination abroad. Secondly to help alleviate poverty in rural areas. Thirdly to communicate measures needed to implement the strategy across relevant organisations and to mobilise people to start new business in the sector and finally to appeal to donors and potential technical partners to support the implementation of the strategy according to Witcombe.

The forecast evaluation of the AT sector provided by the Tourist Board has indicated an increase of 10% tourism growth compared to existing growth of 5%. The overall growth target in 2007 is 788,000 visitors including 78,800 for alternative tourism.