Implications of Policies and Procedures in Sustainable Rural Tourism Development (SRTD): A Case Study of Sri Lanka

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.