Ecotourism is a golden opportunity to Sri Lanka

Ecotourism is a golden opportunity to Sri Lanka, since it has the required natural resources. Tourism is a good foreign income earner and ecotourism is an emerging that Sri Lanka needs to capitalize on. To identify the current level of ecotourism and the potential of five star hotels to adapt this concept this investigation is conducted. 

The problem statement of this investigation is to identify the challenges and barriers faced by five star hotels when implementing ecotourism. The objectives which this investigation hopes to achieve are to measure the current level of awareness of ecotourism in Sri Lanka, to identify the challenges and barriers faced by five star hotels when implementing ecotourism, to identify the willingness of five star hotels to invest in ecotourism projects and finally to develop a strategic plan to overcome these challenges and barriers faced by five star hotels.

The population from which the sample was selected are all hotels listed in the Colombo Stock Exchange. Hotels have various levels like 3 star, four star and five star it is impossible to investigate all, so the cluster sampling technique was utilized to select a sample of 6 five star hotels located in Colombo and are listed in the Colombo Stock Exchange.

Secondary data was collected from various sources like newspaper articles, corporate publications, government publications, websites etc. The findings of this analysis indicate that the level of awareness of Sri Lanka is low, and there is a great lack of support for ecotourism from the government. The main challenges and barriers faced were incompetent tourist guides, bad infrastructure, natural disasters, lack of cultural endowments, competition, lack of government support, Lack of involvement of community and language barriers.