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Event Tourism in Sri Lanka: An Overview

Article · September 2021

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Indika, M.K. (2021). Event Tourism in Sri Lanka: An Overview.
Toureview, 6 - 9.

Event Tourism in Sri Lanka: An Overview

M. K. Amila Indika
Lecturer, Division of Management Studies, University College of Ratmalana, University of
Vocational Technology

Introduction
Events have been playing a pivotal role in tourism industry throughout the world. It was pointed
out that meetings and conferences, one of the main type of events are among the fastest growing
segments in modern tourism (Weber & Ladkin, 2003; Rogers, 1998). Meeting, convention, and
exhibition (MCE) industry has arisen as one of the vital sectors of numbers of Asian countries and
Asian cities such as Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Singapore. Events are conducted at
tourism destinations with objectives of attracting tourists, persuade investments, upgrade image
and enhance local economy since, events are considered as compulsory components in tourism
development (Hernández-Mogollón, Folgado-Fernández, & Duarte 2014).

Event tourism has been defined as a set of interrelations between tourism management and event
management (Getz, 2008). A person who visits and stays away from his usual environment, more
than 24 hours with main intention of attending an event or obtaining event experience can be
defined as an event tourist. However, there are large number of same day event visitors and people
get event experiences during their tours, mainly motivated by other factors. Event tourism aims at
full exploitation of the capabilities of events in order to achieve tourism development of host
communities. Events has an ability to attract more tourists to a destination, while creating value in
selling other products offered by the destination. Specially, not only, festivals are conventionally
considered as tourism assets, but also, those are recognized as tourism products as well.

Typology and nature of event tourism in Sri Lanka

The term ‘event tourism’ is still not commonly used in Sri Lankan context and more narrower
term of ‘MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) tourism’ is more popular in the
country. The island has considerably wide diversity of events those were originated in non-tourism
 context and some events initiated in tourism context. In broader sense, event tourism in Sri Lanka
can be divided in to two main categories as international and domestic event tourism with number
of sub categories as depicted below.

Event tourism in Sri Lanka

International Event Tourism Domestic Event Tourism

MICE Wedding Tourism Heritage Event Religious/Heritage Event Tourism

Tourism Tourism

Sport Event Tourism MICE

Conference Tourism

Sport Events

Carnivals

Other

Due to lack of research, still event tourism in Sri Lanka can be considered as a largely
unexplored domain with lots of open avenues for future research. The international event tourism
mainly comprises from four subsets including MICE tourism, wedding tourism, heritage event
tourism and sport event tourism. And conference tourism is an important sub category of the MICE
tourism.

The Island has focused special attention on development of MICE tourism with considerable
facilities suitable for staging small and medium size conferences (Indika & Gunasekera, 2021). Sri
Lanka Convention Bureau is the government agency responsible for promoting the country as a
MICE destination. All national tourism development plans within last decade have concerned on
improving this sector of tourism. Sri Lanka was ranked in 71st place in the world and 17th place
in Asia Pacific based on number of meetings organized in 2018 (International Congress and
Convention Association [ICCA], 2019). 39,908 and 18,946 MICE tourists visited the country in
2018 and 2019 respectively (Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority [SLTDA], 2019 & 2020).
This decline of MICE arrivals was caused by Easter bomb attacks on 21st April 2019 at three
convention hotels in Colombo and other places.

The island was receiving popularity as a wedding destination and the service is offered by
number of hotels with high concentration on costal area of the South. This subset of event tourism
can be considered as a potential product for further development using available resources offering
low cost weddings, traditional Sri Lankan and Indian weddings. Although, there is a high diversity
in heritage festivals, only few of those events like Kandy Esala festival attract considerable number
of international event tourists. Sport event tourism has not developed as a prominent contributor
for the tourism industry, most probably, due to non-existence of major internationally recognized
recurring sport events in the island. Conducting events at hotels like gala dinners, small heritage
events and beach parties at tourism zones specially, during tourist season has become a norm in
the hospitality industry.

There is no doubt, that number of domestic event trips exceed the international ones to the
island by several times, although, statistical data is not available. The largest subset of domestic
event tourism comprises from religious/heritage festivals which attract millions of domestic
visitors to major religious sites annually. Kandy Esala festival, Kataragama festival, Madu festival
and Jasmine flower festival at Anuradhapura can be pointed out as examples. Recently emerged
new set of Buddhist festivals with increased occurrence of the festivals of historic roots cause to
increase Buddhist religious event tourists to major Buddhist shrines all over the island (Indika,
2021a). Local MICE tourism and sport tourism may be relatively small in expenditure of the
relevant tourism markets. But, local MICE make considerable contribution for income of some
hotels. The most famous carnival attracting large number of domestic event tourists is full month
event of Selalihini Vasantaya at Nuwaraeliya. Events such as some entertainment events may
make a non-considerable level of contribution for domestic event tourism.

Impact of event tourism

In generic sense, earning of foreign exchange, making increased demand for tourism services to
enhance income, employment generation, strengthening of local economies, creating
entrepreneurship opportunities, enhancement of destination image, preservation of intangible
cultural heritage can be pointed out as main positive impacts of event tourism in Sri Lanka. It has
contributed for certain negative impacts such as environmental pollution, cultural degradation,
over tourism with crowded attractions, cost of lost event bidding and some destination marketing
events.

The event tourism has caused to increase foreign exchange earnings of the tourism sector as a
result of relatively higher expenditure of MICE tourists and other international event tourists’
consumption of supplement added products for higher prices. Visitation of large number of tourists
to festival destination cities during the festival seasons generates huge demand for tourism
products such as hotel & other accommodations, restaurants, transportation services and other
attractions of the vicinity. It makes an opportunity for hotels to sell their products for higher prices
and Perahera supplement of Kandy hotels & Cricket supplement of Galle hotels can be provided
as examples. Major religious festivals at Anuradhapura and Kataragama festival create more
business opportunities for local stakeholders of the host communities due to increased domestic
event tourism. The tourist expenditure at the destination areas strengthen local economies. In
addition to those, large number of employments and small & medium entrepreneurship
opportunities are created by the events. Events have been used to increase destination image of Sri
Lanka and heritage events support for the cause on constant basis. World largest tea party staged
in Kandy and Esala festival provide examples respectively. Heritage festivals are important
component of intangible cultural heritage, which are continued and (re) invented due to increased
demand of event tourists safeguarding the heritage.

Environmental pollution is evident in event sites and surrounding cultural landscape after
religious festivals at number of religious attractions due to over tourism. Sometimes, large crowd
of event tourists create over tourism phenomenon making undesired impacts on local communities.
Annual one month long carnival of Selalihini Vasantaya at Nuwaraeliya can be given as an
example. Certain tourism related events such as beach parties are widely considered as events
causing to cultural degradation due to drug consumption and other culturally undesired behaviors
of event participants. Huge expenditure for lost event biddings such as Commonwealth Game in
Hambantota and loss incurred events like IIFA in Colombo can be considered as negative cases
related with event tourism.

Challenges and future

 Lack of infrastructure for large conferences and meetings, professionalization of the event
industry and event tourism, increased competition for MICE in Asia, cost effective marketing
strategies and more recent crisis like Easter bomb attacks & Covid-19 pandemic can be pointed
out as some of the challenges confronted by the event tourism. Event tourism strategies should be
formulated considering market dynamics with direct marketing and product development,
flexibility and adaptability, safety and health, collaborative industry approach, adaptation of
international best practices, training & development of skilled professionals, continuous marketing
and providing flexible packages (Indika, 2021 b) in order to overcome major challenges.

References
Getz, D. (2008). Event tourism: definition, evolution and research. Tourism management, 29, 403-
428.
Hernández-Mogollón, J.M., Folgado-Fernández, J.A., & Duarte, P.A.O. (2014). Event tourism
analysis and state of the art. European journal of tourism, hospitality and recreation, 5(2), 83-102.
Indika, M. K. & Gunasekera, N. (2021). Success factors in managing of international conferences
in Sri Lanka. Asia Pacific International Event Management Journal, 2 (1), 73 – 84.
Indika, M. K. (2021 a). Heritagisation of Religious Festivals and (Re) invention of Buddhist
Heritage in Modern Sri Lanka. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Indika, M. K. (2021 b). Impact of Covid-19 and Business Revival Strategies of Event Industry in
Sri Lanka. In Business Revival of Service Sector: Strategies, Approaches and Practices. New
Delhi: Bharti Publications (In press).
International Congress and Convention Association. (2019). 2018: ICCA Statistics Report Country
& City Rankings Public Abstract. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Author.
Nawarathna, A.M. (2017). An Analysis of the Push and Pull Motives for Sri Lanka as the Wedding
Destination: With Special Reference to Southern Province. International Journal of Engineering
and Management Research, 7(5), 256 – 261.
Rogers, T. (1998). Conferences: a twenty-first century industry. Harlow, England: Adison Wesley
Longman.
Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. 2019. Annual statistical report 2018. Colombo;
Author.
Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. 2020. Annual statistical report 2019. Colombo;
Author.
Weber, K., & Ladkin, A. (2003). The convention industry in Australia and the United Kingdom:
Key issues and competitive forces. Journal of Travel Research, 42, 125-132.

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