Abstract:
Sri Lanka is a competitive tourism destination located in South Asian region. It is rich
with valuable natural resources all over the island. However, the declining
environmental quality adversely affect the tourist satisfaction in Sri Lankan.
Therefore, the objective of this study is to assess the quality of the physical
environment and its effects on the tourists’ satisfaction. The study was carried out as a
questionnaire survey by using 384 international tourists selected through convenience
sampling. The descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analyses were utilized
to analyze the data. The findings indicate that the poor quality of the physical
environment has negatively influenced the tourists' satisfaction and the majority of
tourists are dissatisfied with the environmental management of Sri Lanka as a tourist
and destination. It is necessary to improve the quality of the physical environment to
satisfy the existing tourists then the satisfied tourists will act as evangelists of the Sri
Lankan tourism, who spread the positive word of mouth about their positive
experiences to others. Therefore, Sri Lanka as a fast growing tourism destination
needs taking immediate actions to have a proper garbage management system in
order to reduce the visual population of the tourists in order to improve their
satisfaction.