An Assessment of the Impacts of Tourism in Sri Lanka

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Tourism - Miscellaneous, Griffith University, course: PhD, language: English, abstract: After the end of nearly three decades of civil war in 2009, Sri Lanka is experiencing a tourism boom with a record level of international tourist arrivals. The Sri Lankan government has now identified tourism as a main component in its post-war development strategy. Despite this new policy enthusiasm there is dearth of research on tourism in Sri Lanka. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to contribute to the literature on tourism in Sri Lanka in a number of ways. First, it provides a systematic historical narrative on Sri Lankan tourism and explains how Sri Lanka missed opportunities in the past. Second, it develops a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model focusing on tourism and constructs a database with an emphasis on tourism. Third, it examines the economy-wide effects of the post-war tourism boom in Sri Lanka.

Sriyantha Fernando is a Senior Lecturer in the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. He was the Head of the Department of Commerce and Financial Management during 2007 - 2009. He has also served as a Research Fellow (2016 -2017) at the Griffith Institute of Tourism, Griffith University, Australia. His areas of research interest include Tourism Modelling and Analysing and Development Economics He holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Master of Commerce Degree from University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka and received his PhD in the field of Tourism Economics from the Griffith Business School in Australia. He has published a number of research papers in reputed academic journals and edited books.