Impact of COVID – 19 Epidemic on the Tourism Sector of Sri Lanka

Abstract

The impact of coronavirus on the tourism sector is still skeptic. Therefore, the study focused to explore the impact of the COVID – 19 epidemic on the Tourism sector of Sri Lanka and identifying the appropriate strategies to rebuild the tourism sector by overcoming the pandemic. A qualitative approach was employed in this study by conducting 11 semi-structured interviews. The snowball sampling technique was employed to identify various stakeholders and the collected data were analysed using discourse analysis. Accordingly, findings showed that many hotels and restaurants began retrenching employees and terminating casual and temporary workers’ services due to loss of income. Moreover, backward linkages, notably the association between the host community and tourism businesses in Sri Lanka have been deeply affected. It is concluded that Sri Lankan tourism has been severely disturbed by COVID – 19 because the tourism industry is extremely vulnerable, and trends of the industry are determined by several macro and micro environmental factors. The study provides some different strategies and tactics to overcome the problems faced by the tourism industry as implications. The qualitative approach was used with multiple data sources to gain more insight into the impact of COVID – 19 epidemic on the tourism industry through discourse analysis being the main originality of the study. Consequently, the findings were aligned with the Theory of Change. Recovery strategies are recommended to implement in two distinct phases with stakeholders’ participation to overcome the crisis.