ABSTRACT
The international tourism industry, according to some tourism scholars, has an inherently cyclical and therefore decidedly unstable character. Consumer tastes shift, or indeed are consciously shifted by the image-makers in the industry, bringing popularity to hitherto unknown regions, while popular resorts fade. Locals, at first enthusiastic, become either indifferent or positively hostile as saturation point is reached or passed. In some cases, areas which have lost popularity find it again, and hence undergo a second cycle of development. On the other hand, some previously popular tourist sites simply decline after their peak and never again find favour with the travelling public. 1 Whereas the growth in tourist arrivals experienced in Sri Lanka between 1966 and 1982 led many confidently to predict that by the end of the 1980s international tourists would exceed 500,000 (P. Seneviratne 1982:97), others, including those on the streets of Kandy, felt that 1982 itself could turn out to be the peak year. Given the European recession, many were gloomy about the future. The record in the years following 1982 was, in fact, one of considerable decline in tourist numbers, not, however, because of the operation of normal cyclical factors which affect the evolution of touristic systems, but because of the outbreak of widespread civil violence.
