Ecotourism is the fastest growing sector of the tourism industry and currently captures $77 billion of the global tourism market. According to Travel Weekly magazine, sustainable tourism could grow to 25% of the world's travel market by 2012, taking the value of the sector up to approximately $473 billion a year (Travel, 2009).
The end of a three decade long civil war in May of 2009 has opened doors for various economic opportunities in Sri Lanka. The peace dividend coupled with growing global demand for eco- tourism has encouraged the government to make the island nation the ideal destination for eco-tourism in the South Asian region. The government is trying to increase the number of inbound tourists from around 500,000 per year currently to 2.5 million annually over the next five years (Growth, 2010).The government of Sri Lanka is also targeting USD1bn in annual tourism revenue by 2015. The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Agency (SLTDA) said the industry directly employed 52,071 Sri Lankans in 2009, with another 72,899 jobs estimated to be indirectly created by the industry (Relation, 2009).
Asia is the largest source market region to Sri Lanka’s inbound tourism, followed by Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Australia, North America and Middle East. Sri Lanka attracts the largest number of tourists from India. In 2009, 447,890 tourists arrived in Sri Lanka out of which 83,634 were from India (18% of the market share). In 2009, average occupancy rate of the hospitality industry was recorded at 48.4% compared to 43.9% in 2008 (Relation, 2009).
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