Sri Lanka tourism was in a boom till 2019 and thereafter faced a tragic decline in the growth rate with a terrorist attack in 2019, pandemic pressure in 2020, and economic crisis in 2021 up until now. Sri Lanka tourism was performing toward the sustainable development objectives and wanted to reach to its peak with the targets. However, similarly to other countries, the growing inequality is a highlighted problem in Sri Lanka. It is important to understand and determine how to make tourism more inclusive, especially for a country that is trying to restart the industry.
Sri Lanka tourism was using this industry as a mechanism to reduce inequalities and to make society more inclusive. It was evident this approach was successful in reaching developing tourism geographics. The key aim of this study is to identify the context of inclusive tourism in Sri Lanka and the effect on the development of the industry. In addition to that it is expected to provide suitable analytical aspects to the policymakers to develop inclusive tourism with the changes in tourism geography to increase the potentiality of the economic and social dimensions.
Elements of inclusive tourism in Sri Lanka are demonstrated with reference to major destinations in Sri Lanka with a range of examples. These examples give a detailed understanding of the effect of tourism on the marginalized people toward production and the circular effect of such consumption on Sri Lanka tourism. However, the study demonstrates how to maximize the current inclusive tourism aspects to promote Sri Lanka tourism and how to minimize the challenges toward inclusive tourism to achieve wider potentiality in developing aspects in tourism geographics.