Impact of Tourists Harassments at Beach Sites in Sri Lanka (A Case Study of Hikkaduwa Beach, Sri Lanka)

Abstract

Beach sites are considered as one of the major travel motives of the tourists to visit Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is rich with wonderful beach sites including Hikkaduwa, Unawatuna, Bentota. Not only that the beach is also a convergent place where the tourists and the locals meet and in the process making friendships. As the result of that most of the tourists face any kinds of harassments. However, many tourists visiting Sri Lanka have to undergo many forms of harassment. Ensuring safety of tourists in the tourist destinations is an important factor to retaining the higher number of tourist arrivals to the country since it is significance to the Sri Lankan Economy. So, the types of tourists’ harassments are some of the issues with not only negative but also significant effect on the destination image, propensity to repeat, economy and the growth of tourism. Amidst to this background, the main objective of this study is to identify the types of the harassments faced by the tourists at beach sites in Sri Lanka and to identify the impact of tourists’ harassments to the destination image and the propensity to repeat. As a famous coastal area, Hikkaduwa was selected for this study. The study was carried out using the mix methodology. Both qualitative method and quantitative method used to carry out the study. Both primary data such as questionnaire survey with tourists and the discussion with the community members, site guides, security officers, officers who work in tourism related organization and secondary data such as articles published in the internet, relevant text books and research articles, tourists police reports (RTC-PTD Report), tourist magazines used for this study. Both systematic random sampling method and convenience sampling method used for the study, respectively sample the foreign tourists from Hikkaduwa and the interviewers. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) used to analyze the data. The study revealed that the tourists who stay at Hikkaduwa undergo harassments by different parties like beach boys, pesters, thieves etc. And the harassments create dissatisfaction among the tourists and it also affect for the destination image and the propensity to repeat.