COVID-19 : Impacts & Challenges in tourism sector:

Abstract

The Galle Fort in Sri Lanka was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1988, however, it was declared as a historical heritage and special regulatory zone in 1978. This has become a cause for development of tourism and tourism-related activities in this area. The Covid-19 outbreak in the first quarter of 2020 in Sri Lanka affected tourism and hospitality services in deadly manner in terms of financial income. This has resulted a decline in the services sector significantly to 2.3% in 2019, compared to the growth rate of 4.6% in 2018. The Easter Sunday attacks on tourism related activities, which has led to negative results (i.e. -17.39%) on tourist arrivals in 2019 (CBSL, 2019). While Government was in the process of uplifting this situation, the tourism industry experienced various brunt situations; particularly unsteady political situation, subsequent presidential election in November-2019 and COVID-19 outbreak in China in December-2019. This has caused drawbacks in service sector including tourism industry for the second time in recent past in a massive level, after the civil war situation in the country. Soon after the end of inland civil war in 2009, the tourism industry shown a gradual progressive trend in Sri Lanka and tourism arrivals was recorded as 0.7 million in 2010 and it reached to a peak of 2.3 million in 2018.