Its Carrying Capacity Stupid! Not a Tourism numbers game – A rethink needed!

Why is almost every policy of the Govt. stupid? Be it energy, water conservation, wildlife conservation, tourism, agriculture, education, healthcare, housing, everything is being done the WRONG way!

Simple, we have people who will not even get a job as a security guard in a bank branch, filling MPs chairs in Parliament! Why don’t the people or why have they not realized this by now, after 70 years of making the same mistakes, and lying to the public.

Is it because the public after all this time, cannot recognize a lie? Is it because we are a nation of liars, we all lie, but believe everything we say is true?

http://www.dailymirror.lk/108429/Sri-Lanka-currently-not-a-destination-for-sustainable-tourists-despite-industry-efforts-expert

The link is just to show one example of how far out we are on the Tourism product, from what we are trying to do and what is really happening.

So if we take Tourism for discussion in this entry, our targets of 4 Million tourists in this Country by 2020, where currently a tourist spends 40% of his daytime hours in a bus or car travelling, he is NOT enjoying his visit! This will only get worse with the traffic, and so we are killing tourism before it even started. Yala already is over used and a nightmare to visit, and we want to encourage more people to go there! Are we mad?

So let me explain a completely new concept for tourist to Sri Lanka. Its called single experience tourism. This is where a tourist on a 7 day vacation stays ONLY in one place, and on a 14 day vacation stays only in two places.

They are on holiday, to relax, read, eat, enjoy one or two pleasures they came here to soak in. It may be sun and beach, it maybe birding, it may be to see ruins, it maybe to take in an up country experience of tea and hikes, it maybe a religious experience, it may be ayurvedic or spa treatment. I suggest just marking ONE of these and giving them the worlds best experience of JUST that one ONLY.

They can then spend their whole holiday being pampered in that particular place, taking in the experience they want only, rather than mix and match everything under the sun, and then enjoy NOTHING as is usually the case. We don’t want coach tourists, just being bundled in and out of a coach. They can go to another Country for that.

In this way we will have satisfied tourists, but there is one caveat, that our service standards which are still not even one star at 5 star hotels comes up to 5!

To say nothing of minimizing the carbon footprint by minimal waste of fossil fuels and traffic jams fouling the environment!