ABSTRACT
Introduction Although Sri Lanka has a long history as a tourist destination, there have been ups and downs in the tourism industry in Sri Lanka in recent decades, particularly between 2003 and 2009 due to political violence and the separatist war interspersed with a number of periods of peace. Since the end of the separatist war in May 2009 tourism in Sri Lanka has been booming and it has been ranked as one of the top tourist destinations in the world for the past few years. The purpose of this chapter is to present an overview on tourism in Sri Lanka. The chapter mainly focuses on Sri Lanka’s attractiveness to tourists, historical evolution of its policies towards modern-day tourism, the changing patterns of tourist arrivals during dierent episodes of war and peace and the recent tourism boom and the associated national tourism development strategy (TDS).
