Driving Sri Lankan Tourism to Sustainability

By: Dr Madura Thivanka Pathirana, BritishSchool of Commerce, Edith Cowan University.

A group of Australia Awards Sustainable Tourism Short Course alumni are working towards development of sustainable tourism in Sri Lanka with the knowledge and experience from Australia.

Sri Lankan tourism stakeholders, at the community level, face many social and economic challenges due to COVID 19. I, with other Australia Awards Sustainable Tourism short course alumni and some Australian academics, decided to help Sri Lankan tourism stakeholders during the downturn by enhancing their knowledge on sustainability.

We are a team of sustainable tourism short course participants who finished our short course in February 2020. The short course we participated in shared knowledge about sustainable tourism and involved travelling toQueensland to learn about success stories and best practices in tourism. This allowed us to build strong international partnerships to implement sustainable tourism in Sri Lanka. This team included members from the Ministry of Tourism, SriLanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management (SLITHM), Sri Lanka TourismDevelopment Authority (SLTDA), National Tourist Guides, and other private sector participants and academics.

Since we completed the course in February 2020, we have kept in touch with the Australian academics and tourism professionals we met there. We have also been able to participate in many tourism industry related activities and projects. “I was able to take part in international research conferences to present my research findings as a result of these relationships”.

One challenge the team has faced was lack of access to funds to implement a training project. “Though we have enough knowledge and willingness to work voluntarily, the group was having issues with funding,” says Nishanthi Kulathunga. We applied to Australia's small grants scheme which provided the funds for our project for an e-learning platform to educate tourism stakeholders free of charge in 2020. Alumni of the short course, Australian academics from GriffithUniversity and University of the Sunshine Coast, and other Australian tourism professionals joined this program. Throughout the year, more than 3000stakeholders have successfully completed the program on this platform.

In 2021, the team has launched a free Area Guide workshop for Uva province with support from Australia Awards and SLITHM. The key objective is training and developing 20 selected youth from the Uva province. The full curriculum of the SLITHM area guide course will be delivered over a period of 3months. At the end of the program, the SLTDA will award an Uva Province AreaGuide license to candidates who successfully complete the program.

Members are now applying the knowledge they gained in their respective fields and companies for the development of sustainable tourism. “I was involved in designing a range of innovative programs to increase long-term sustainable tourism practices at the community level through my company,” said Malinda Ekanayake from Arunya Vacations.

Despite the tourism industry slowing down in 2020 and 2021, we were able to use our time and resources to share the knowledge and experience we learned in the Short Course. We hope that the interest, enthusiasm, and wealth of knowledge that we gained by participating in the short course will allow us to develop other projects to promote sustainable tourism in Sri Lanka in the coming years.

Expected outcomes of our projects:

1. Economic recovery, and the ability to ensure job security to tourism stakeholders through the provision of professional skill development.
2. To share knowledge about building relationships among tourism stakeholders to have a sustainable future, both during the pandemic, and post-COVID-19.
3. To increase social security for the families of youth by being responsible and recognised tourism stakeholders in the Sri Lankan tourism industry.  
4. To drive the Sri Lankan domestic and international tourism aspects to economic sustainability with professional and formal skilled labour.