Why Travel agents shouldn't ignore Domestic Tourists?

         Travelling is essential and it’s a part of a person’s Life. It can be a reason by business, Leisure or Hobby. This is where the Travel Agents plays a huge role in promoting the destinations, Accommodations, Activities, and etc. Hence, Tourism is one of the fastest growing industry in the world. But statistic shows that in Tourism Industry travel agents promotes mostly International Tourism but not the Domestic Tourism.

Sri Lanka is a developing country that matches great natural beauty with beautiful man made creations. With over 1,600 km of coastline, Sri Lankan tourism's rich with tropical beaches, dense jungles, ancient cities, Number of world heritage sites and wild life sanctuaries, which are eye-catching attractions of both domestic and international tourists. International tourism brings more economic benefits such as foreign exchange, than the domestic tourism thus the attention for international tourism is always high than the domestic tourism. Today people have forgotten that there is a big market for domestic tourism rather than the international tourism within the country. It is witnessed by the Sri Lanka tourism statistics as it reveals the statistics related to international tourism only.

SLTDA official sight Says that “Sri Lanka is known for its rich Buddhist culture and history and offers many places of religious and historic significance.” such as Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Kandy, Katharagama, Sri pada (Adams‟ peak)”.Such attractions are located in North central province, central province, Uva province & Sabaragamuwa province respectively. Those sights are famous among Buddhists for pilgrimage tours. Western province records the highest population density and out of them most are Buddhists (Population Atlas of Sri Lanka 2012). Thus is not difficult to promote pilgrimage tours to the Buddhist in western province especially in Colombo area and it is the area where most of the travel agencies based in. 

 And second largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka are Tamils with both Sri Lankan and Indian. One of the most famous attractions among Tamils is Katharagama temple and it is situated in Uva province where there is a little Tamil density. The argument is that the travel agencies in Sri Lanka can easily bring their products to the local market because the distribution of the population and the distribution of their major attractions are not matching. Thus, people tend to travel & there is an intention to travel. Yet, the problem is they travel by their own. 

However what travel agencies tend to forget is that customers means both domestic and international tourist not only international. They highly target international tourist and have forgot that domestic clients are also an important part of Sri Lankan tourism.As per local authorities of the country it has been found out that while more than one million foreigners visit Sri Lanka as tourists, six million Sri Lankans travel within the country as domestic tourists.

Sri Lanka probably has the largest number of public holidays of any country in the world, which encourages domestic tourism as short breaks become frequent. Therefore, the public holiday such as full moon days can be used effectively for the day excursions to the areas like Kandy, Bentota, and Galle etc.

Mainly the international tourism is seasonal. But domestic tourism can be promote within the country any period of the year. Hence travel agents can specially target the domestic tourists in the off season.

Published By – Travel Hunters 
Tourism and Development 
BA(Hons) Travel and Tourism Management – London Metropolitan University