Impact of seasonal variation on travel and tourism sector: A study of the post civil unrest in Arugam Bay in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the effect of seasonality on the tourism and hospitality industry in ArugamBay after the civil unrest across the different firms in tourism. This study uses both quantitative and qualitative analyses using primary data. Fifty questionnaires give valid responses that were used for analysis. Out of 80 questionnaires, the average response rate was 62.5%. An exploratory study, descriptive analysis, and an Independent Sample Test were used to identify the potentials of tourism, the overall impact of seasonality, and the impact of seasonality across different travel and tourism sector of the study area. According to the results, 83%, 75%, 68%, and 59.9% of firms agreed on the impact of seasonality on environment, workers, supply, and quality of services, respectively in ArugamBay. It also concluded that the impact of seasonality on workers, supply, and quality of services is not the same among all the categories of firms except environment. The variation in seasonality in the travel and tourism sector is because of the lack of regional planning considering the types of firms in the tourism sector. Also, insufficient resources and lack of consistent capacity between various firms in the sectors are also course variations because of the effect of seasonality.