USP in tourism marketing:

Sri Lankan smile

Vipula Wanigasekera

The extent to which the Sri Lankan hospitality is remembered and acknowledged implies the need to emphasize this unique characteristic of people in this country, through communication strategies in tourism marketing.

The typical humbleness of the Sri Lankans had been overshadowed by orchestrated propaganda over the last two and a half decades thus preventing Sri Lanka from capitalizing on this distinctive aspect which stands tall in the fierce competition in the region to make their destinations attractive to tourism generating markets.

It is time, the industry went all out projecting that this Island has the most hospitable people in the world!

After the Second World War, many countries that were rising in economic terms made their customers and consumers believe that their nations are hospitable than the other. Customer is the king and is always right was a theory that was imposed on developing countries like ours, but not for long. Decades later, the same countries were faced with the problem that the smile comes out only when the eyes spot the money.

To explain this from a different view point, in marketing studies, a question that is often debated is whether a salesman is born or made. Why it is presumed sometimes that a salesman is born, is owing to the fact that many salesmen possess natural skills to what they commonly call the ability to “sell a freezer to an Eskimo” without much training.

In the proliferation of a wider range of tourism products and services and opening up of new attractions, tourism marketers are confronted with a dilemma to identify the product strengths or Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) to differentiate their destinations from others in their communication strategies.

To be ahead of competitors, tourism salesmen are called up to become ‘Dream Sellers’ because holidaymakers consider their holiday visit to be a dream and the destinations therefore need to package the product and the tours with such an appeal.

The options of product offerings, diversity of locations and vivid attractions are the strengths of many destinations particularly in this part of the world.

Marketeers have spent millions of dollars in positioning destinations in the minds of potential consumers through branding and other means of communications. It is in the light of this, Sri Lanka has to compete with the rest of the destinations.

Sri Lanka is an Island of variety. Her diversity of natural landscapes from golden beaches to green carpeted mountains, waterfalls, thick forests, blue lagoons and the cultural heritage and the civilization running back to centuries. These will remain to be strengths of the product line but there is more perhaps less discovered.

Hospitality is the heart of tourism. Ethics in this industry are guided by codes of conduct, industry standards and employee manuals.

The World Tourism Organization is said to have proposed an industry-wide code of ethics as there is no universal code for the hospitality industry. Many text books on ethics have been published and they are used in education courses. How much an industry which is made of both art and science, can bring these ethics into practice in real life has been a question for decades.

Sri Lankan tourism industry often boasts of our friendly people for their hospitality. As in the case of the approach of born salesmen, the Sri Lankan smile is retained in the memory of almost all visitors that travelled to Sri Lanka up to now. Evidently, the consumer perception on Sri Lankans has been positively reinforced by the inherent friendly hospitality of Sri Lankans with a genuine smile.

The smile which is an essential element of hospitality, says a lot. It in general terms denotes a friendly gesture. Emotionally it is more than that. A smile depicts the Brahma Vihara such as Metta, Karuna etc in Buddhism and love in theistic religions. To quote two reputed Journalists who visited Sri Lanka recently, on the people in this country whom they interacted with.

“......And its best value: smiling people welcoming the tourists” Sonia Graupera of ITP International Press Europe.

“......Sri Lankans are genuinely hospitable, in fact they even gave me money to be offered to various temples” - Ivon Vasan - Unique Magazine, Russian Federation

If this is what they remember most of their visit to Sri Lanka, it may be necessary to go beyond a line in brochures, websites, leaflets, videos and posters touching on the ‘Sri Lankan Smile’.