Study on the relationship between destination promotion factors and tourists arrivals to Sri Lanka

Abstract

Destination promotion creates the flow of tourists’ arrival to a certain destination. In the Sri Lankan context, both government and private organizations are involving to conduct promotional campaigns for the purpose of tourist arrivals increment. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify how the selected destination promotional factors “advertising, personnel selling, public relations, and sales promotion” conducted by both public and private organizations effects on dstination performance through tourist arrivals. Study objectives were to examine the relationship between destination promotion facts and foreign tourists’ arrivals, to examine the most significant promotional factor affect with foreign tourists’ arrivals and to make suggestions to improve tourists’ arrivals via promotion factors. The research method was the quantitative method. The study population was total tourists who arrived in Sri Lanka in the first quarter of the year. Selected 100 foreign tourists were selected as a study sample by using simple random sampling. Both primary and secondary data were used by the researcher. Five points Likert scale questionnaire was used to collect the primary data. Websites, research articles, journal articles, etc were used as a secondary data source. According to the study findings, Sales promotion, Advertising is created a strong positive relationship with tourists’ arrivals. Public relations and personnel selling also created a weak positive relationship with tourists’ arrivals to Sri Lanka. Therefore advertising and sales promotion via social media and the web will be suitable for future destination promotion activities.