Abstract:
Developing tourism in rural areas is found as a panacea for many developing countries
to alleviate poverty and overcome many other developmental challenges. Although
tourism, a non-traditional developmental intervention accrue some economic benefits
for local settings, negative impacts of tourism exacerbates the positive impacts.
On the one hand Tourism is politically sound development strategy in recapturing
and regenerating the development in rural areas on the other hand it challenges the
sustainability in the rural development process. This study intended to appraise the
role of policies and procedures in Sustainable Rural Tourism Development (SRTD)
with the naturalistic evidences from tourism development in rural Sri Lanka. It
employed critical qualitative research design to bring forth the interpretations from
natural setting through personal interviews, direct observation and field notes in
addition to a wide documental review. Documental reviews illuminate a number of
ideals of SRTD in supporting local community empowerment, regenerating rural
livelihoods, preserving and conserving socio-culture and environment. However, in
reality socially constructed world of rural Sri Lanka reveals that the sustainable rural
tourism development is curtailed by the inappropriate and unsteady policy formulation
and implementation. Weaken policy formulation and implementation in real world of
rural tourism development averts the ideals of SRTD.
