Post-War City to a Tourism City: the Perspectives of Local Stakeholders on Post-War City Tourism Development in Jaffna, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Wars destroy the tourism cities by causing damages to their cultural and natural attractions. However, the post-war cities have great upward potentials to develop through careful and integrated tourism planning. Thus, the aim of this paper is to identify the perspectives of local stakeholders’ on tourism development in a post-war city. The study employed qualitative methods in collecting and analyzing the data while closely referring to pertinent literature. Interviews, observations, and focus-group discussions have been the main data collection tools and content analysis was performed with NVivo (v.12) to analyze the data. Analysis of interviews, focus group discussion findings, and observations highlighted the availability of a plethora of tourism potentials within post-war Jaffna that include, both cultural and natural attractions: Hindu Kovils and Buddhist temples, colonial heritage, traditional cuisines, and way of life, beaches, flora and fauna, and sceneries. The study further identified lack of professionals, absence of a master plan, remoteness, poor infrastructure, and absence of tourist activities as main obstacles for tourism development in Jaffna. Finally, implications are forwarded based on stakeholders’ perspectives to promote post-war city tourism in Jaffna. Wars are not common and post-war tourism cities are rare. The present study is focussed on a destination where the war has ended, causing much damages to the destination. The study evaluates the tourism potentials and challenges based on stakeholders’ perspectives and forwards implications for city tourism development despite of post-war empirical glitches, which has rarely addressed in the tourism literature