Abstract
Developing tourism in rural areas is found as a panacea for many developing countries to alleviate poverty and overcome many other developmental challenges. Although tourism, a non-traditional developmental intervention accrue some economic benefits for local settings, negative impacts of tourism exacerbates the positive impacts. On the one hand Tourism is politically sound development strategy in recapturing and regenerating the development in rural areas on the other hand it challenges the sustainability in the rural development process. This study intended to appraise the role of policies and procedures in Sustainable Rural Tourism Development (SRTD) with the naturalistic evidences from tourism development in rural Sri Lanka. It employed critical qualitative research design to bring forth the interpretations from natural setting through personal interviews, direct observation and field notes in addition to a wide documental review. Documental reviews illuminate a number of ideals of SRTD in supporting local community empowerment, regenerating rural livelihoods, preserving and conserving socio-culture and environment. However, in reality socially constructed world of rural Sri Lanka reveals that the sustainable rural tourism development is curtailed by the inappropriate and unsteady policy formulation and implementation. Weaken policy formulation and implementation in real world of rural tourism development averts the ideals of SRTD.
Highlights
Tourism is one of the largest rapidly growing global industries, underpinned with conquering contemporary socio-economic and environmental challenges
Since “case studies are deliberately designed to answer series of questions” (Yin, 2003:31), vital role of policies and procedures in rural tourism development holistically investigated in the natural setting of rural Sri Lanka to illuminating multiple realities
Policy setting or formulation is a challengeable task that determines the success of the entire rural tourism development process
Summary
Tourism is one of the largest rapidly growing global industries, underpinned with conquering contemporary socio-economic and environmental challenges. 1 pp 74-93 conservation of natural and man-made resources to attain business objectives in conjunction with curtailing the sustainability of resources in which tourism has been built, and threaten the survival of present and future generation. Tourism has been recognized as an alternative avenue for rural areas to regain, restore and recapitalize the rural natural and man-made resources, while substituting the widely criticized conventional mass tourism. Different types of tourism and recreation activities have been conceptualized and wrapped up with different labels of alternative tourism, driven into rural areas. Illuminating this Liu (2003) argue that sustainable forms of tourism never reach their objectives through adapting the modern conventional tourism development approaches. The policies and procedures are inevitable element to regulate and operate tourism in rural areas to reach the sustainable development goals
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