Are we losing tourism in Hikkaduwa?

Medha Gunawardhana , H.L.G. Sanjeewani, Department of Town Country Planning, University of Moratuwa

Sri Lanka's diverse landscape and rich cultural heritage present a wide range of tourism opportunities, ranging from "sun and beach" holidays, wildlife excursions, and cultural tours (Tsung-Wei Lai, 2006).

Tourism began to develop mainly along the coastal area and especially along the southwest coast in Sri Lanka. The tourist industry has shown a remarkable rate of growth during the period of 1967-1978. Increasing tourist activities are perceived as a means to bring in much-needed foreign exchange to improve the quality of life of the local people.

Today, tourism is the fourth largest foreign exchange earner in Sri Lanka and contributes significantly to the economic growth and development of this island country.

Hikkaduwa and Negombo grew as tourist destinations much earlier than any other location in Sri Lanka. Hikkaduwa is very unique in its characteristics which offers wide clean sandy beaches and the beautiful coral reefs and marine life.

It attracted the fun and sun seekers mostly in the 1980s. It was popular as a holiday destination and a resting place during the journey down south, among local and foreign tourists. The unspoilt environment, natural coral gardens and its beauty increased the value of this holiday destination.

Arrival of tourism at Hikkaduwa is not limited to the so-called star class hotels along the beaches. On the one hand it has contributed to the changing physical form and urban character, while on the other hand, it has involved the citizens to the extent of their becoming part and parcel of the industry itself.

Now there is a conflict in Hikkaduwa becoming a victim of its own success. Because, Hikkaduwa tourist industry grew without much planning due to the rapid demand for tourism, it's haphazard development has gone beyond the limits and has over-exploited the natural environmental assets by the degradation of coral reefs, deteriorating coastal water quality, increasing traffic congestion and noise.

Accordingly, the long-run survival of such resources and their quality have been threatened causing a decline of tourism in Hikkaduwa area. The influx of visitors and uncontrolled growth accompanied by mass tourism development, has generated a number of negative economic, social and environmental effects on the host communities (Tsung-Wei Lai, 2006).

In the early 1960s the government recognised the potential of tourism development and promoted tourism as a means of generating foreign exchange and employment opportunities, and for expanding economic activities.

This outward looking policy certainly attracted more tourists, out of which a significant part sought beach holidays. Unfortunately, the government was not prepared to accommodate and cater to the increased tourist arrivals with a proper management plan.

However, the community in the Hikkaduwa area eventually offered accommodation and catering facilities for the increasing tourist arrivals without guidance from the government or any other responsible body. It was obvious that the local government agencies were also not structured to respond to this rapid development.

The tourist industry therefore proceeded in the absence of a plan. Thus, Hikkaduwa is already faced with problems resulting from ad-hoc tourism development and improper management of resources.

Various studies carried out recently have noted that unplanned and uncoordinated mass tourism in the Asia/Pacific Region have caused degradation of coastal, natural and built environmental resources which in turn threaten the sustainability of tourism in the long run (Thanthrigama, G. 1994).

It is clear that the value of the environmental resources in sustaining the tourism business in the future, has not been properly understood by the business and local communities.

According to a recent research carried out by the authors, 88% of the foreign tourists are attracted to the natural environment including corals and its related activities. If the peacefulness and natural beauty is lost, tourism in such sites will not be sustainable and these countries will no longer be able to promote their coastal sites for beach holidays.

The quality of the beach is therefore a key aspect of the physical environment that cannot be ignored in a sea side resort. This calls for more attention to be paid to the conservation aspects of the attractive sites while making attempts to promote more tourist arrivals.

Presently, tourist arrivals in Hikkaduwa is declining and threatening the major income source of the local community. According to the research, 88% of the respondents stated that there is a decline in tourist arrivals and their source of income is under threat.

85% of the local business people believe that the decline of tourist arrivals occurred as a result of the unplanned development of the area without proper coordination and regulation. The foreign tourists expressed the most severe problems in the area as unclean beaches, traffic noise, poor accommodation quality, and restricted beach access.

Some hotel owners' opinions on the decline of tourism were expressed as, increasing prices, traffic noise and congestion, small beach, poor facilities, harassment of beach boys, aggressive selling, security problems, and dangerous roads and the pollution of the sea and the land.

The majority of people who are involved in the tourist trade believe that tourism in the area has deteriorated especially in terms of it's quality. Most of the narrow strips of land in between the A2 road and the beach have been used for hotel construction because of the ready access to the beach.

And also there are so many buildings along the Galle Road and the beach front which have not followed building standards or architectural guidelines of the relevant regulatory authorities. As a result of this rapid, sporadic and haphazard development of tourism so many problems have generated.

These buildings appear as a wall along both sides of the road giving an unpleasant view to the visitors and blocking the view of the sea and preventing the free blowing of sea breeze. This has resulted in visual blight and in many cases blocking the potentially attractive views of the coastline from the road, leading to invite low investments into the hotel stock.

The quality of the environment has also been degraded because of the uncontrolled, ill-designed or architecturally unsuitable construction for the tourist industry. Unplanned development associated with tourism has led to over exploitation and misuse of the resources. Degradation of the coral reef is a major problem.

This is caused by a number of factors such as the use of glass bottom boats to view the corals and coral fish by tourists. The overloaded boats touch and damage the top of the coral. In addition, to have a closer look at the corals some tourists are inclined to jump out of the boats thus causing damage to the coral reef.

Swimmers, snorkelers and surfers damage the coral reef by climbing, standing or walking on the reef flat.

Sometimes tourists stand on the reef to rest. They break off the coral pieces to take as souvenirs. Increasing pressure without paying attention to the proper management of resources will only aggravate the existing problems and the result will be the further degradation of natural environmental resources. Another serious problem that limits and retards the development of seaside resorts is that of pollution.

There are tourism related business establishments with no proper management system for solid waste and sewerage disposal.

The beach attached to the establishment or the site adjacent to the sewerage plant, or the mangrove land used by the tourism establishments are used to dispose the solid waste.

The delayed collection of garbage and allowing garbage heaps on kerbsides, compound the situation.

Another reason to negatively impact tourism in Hikkaduwa is the traffic congestion. The narrow highway between Colombo and Matara goes through the tourism area of Hikkaduwa. This road is usually used by all types of vehicles and also pedestrians.

There is only little provision for pavements for pedestrians and no provisions for cycling. Due to the ribbon development there are no parking facilities and no bus bays or service lanes.

And also, there are no speed limit signs, law enforcement is lacking, drivers are careless, no speed bumps or other methods of traffic control. There are no side walks or off-street parking. Because of these reasons roads are congested in the town area.

Hikkaduwa has neither a special tourist police unit nor is there a tourist information centre to provide information or services. Tourists have voiced negative feelings about traffic congestion and noise which disturb the quiet environment and the peacefulness of the area.

The inadequacy of facilities along the road is a major environmental hazard in terms of increased level of accidents, vehicle emissions and noise pollution. The unfortunate situation is that if the peacefulness and natural beauty is lost in an area, tourism in such sites will not be sustainable and it will no longer be able to promote the coastal sites for beach holidays.

Social problems have also emerged consequent to the development of this area as a low budget and ad-hoc tourist destination. Young teenage people have been lured into various types of vices for financial rewards.

This has resulted in a high rate of school dropouts and disruption to their education. In addition, the introduction of drugs, prostitution and other activities are also evident in the area. These social problems eventually affect the foreigners in different ways.

Aggressive selling of goods such as ornaments, batik cloths, handicrafts and sexual harassment by beach boys make a fearful environment for the foreigners, especially the ladies.

Although these activities may bring a significant income to a few people in the area, its overall cost easily overrides the benefits to be accrued in the long-term. In this context, there is an urgent need to explore possibilities of planning the area in order to attract more quality-oriented tourists.

While Hikkaduwa is seeking the proper planning and management to rebuild the decline in tourism, the tsunami disaster came in December 2004 and destroyed all tangible and intangible assets in the area.

The tsunami disaster has affected the population both financially as well as socially. A large number of families lost their major assets, including their homes. The colossal loss of property exceeded Rs.600 million.

The coastal environment of Hikkaduwa area was damaged significantly due to the tsunami wave and the events that followed. Existing environmental problems were further embellished due to this natural disaster. The enormity of the tragedy has awakened us all to the potential vulnerability of the coastal belt to the same event in the future.

The post-tsunami situation provided a window of opportunity for a fresh approach to participatory management of coastal resources and to rebuild and reshape the town in order to open up views to the sea from the road and to tidy up some areas of rubbish to develop a sustainable tourism based economy.

After the tsunami, obviously a massive amount of infrastructure rehabilitation and rebuilding of property were needed. It was essential to learn from other destinations which maintain sustainable tourism practice to develop a tourism product and to promote tourism in a sustainable manner.

These would be strongly resistant to natural disasters, environmentally friendly, more involved in the community and bring more revenues from tourism to the local economy.

Having such an opportunity, it was argued could we have achieved our ultimate dream. It was high time to look back at the coastline to understand where we have gone wrong and to correct our mistakes before taking a forward step, as it is almost always never too late to say sorry and rectify.

But it is obvious according to the survey findings of the tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction works, that it surely and definitely failed to re-plan or rebuild Hikkaduwa.

Why we failed to use this opportunity to plan Hikkaduwa? Because,although it was imperative to plan the reconstruction to get the maximum benefit from tourism, the government failed to take decisions within a short period of time. Also, it took some time to decide and prepare post-tsunami rehabilitation and reconstruction guidelines, building codes and regulations to be followed by the people or any other institution to rebuild the area.

There should be a resurgence of effort for greater collaboration, not only among the government institutions but also with the other stakeholder parties, to rebuild the area and to launch the long-term sustainable development in Hikkaduwa.

The local community protested against the decision of the set back,because the majority of the people totally depend on the coastal resources, and they have to change their source of income if they shift to a land far from the beach.

On the other hand, the Colombo-Matara A2 road and the railway track appeared as a physical barrier for the shifting of settlements to a safer place away from the 100m buffer zone. There were no suitable vacant state owned lands in close proximity to the beach to shift the settlements.

The Government and other funding agencies offered compensation for the victims who partially or completely lost their places but the guidelines set out for rebuilding of the area didn't work properly due to the lack of monitoring and coordination among the agencies.

Thus, the reconstruction of the houses proceeded according to their own plans without any mitigatory measure to minimise the economical damage in the next tsunami event.

Instead of shifting from a vulnerable area to a safer place the number of buildings after the tsunami have increased by nearly 200, exposing a greater economic loss in the next tsunami event.

Therefore, it is obvious we couldn't take the great opportunity to rebuild our prime tourist destination to a systematically planned area for sustainable tourism development.

Government failures, lack of physical planning approaches and local communities' decisions influenced the lost chance. This calls for more attention to be paid to the conservation and planning aspects of the attractive sites while making attempts to promote more tourist arrivals.

Therefore, the need for sustainable tourism development through the management of coastal environmental resources, and by systematically planning of the area to obtain the maximum benefits in the long run with minimum harmful effects.

It has become very essential and a key issue to be addressed by planners, policy makers, professionals, businessmen, academics, politicians and the local community.