Understanding how tourism enriches the heart

THIS is a question that every entrepreneur in the tourism industry must ask themselves.

- BY SURYA VISHWA

Does an individual travel to merely bask in a concrete lap of luxury? Since we are asking these questions in a Sri Lankan backdrop let us look at the answers from the lens of this country. Do foreigners who travel here, come looking for luxury, which most of them have in their own home, given that most of the visitors to Sri Lanka are from the opulent Western world? The competition in the realm of global hospitality industry is vast. If manmade luxury - high rise buildings with personal pool in every room that kind of thing - is the yardstick, then there are plenty of such in many parts of the world. If you examine carefully, one will see that this kind of tourism is often crafted to fill the void in the bounty of nature, in countries that have to give a tough fight to produce every drop of water and every root of plant.

Yet, in countries such as Sri Lanka where lack of water and trees are merely the vicious action of ignorance of depletion, there is still the conduit of abundance that does not seem to get extinct. What we call culture is an offspring of nature. How people of different locations act varyingly, which includes their penchant for divergent values, depends on their surrounding. If it is concrete luxury alone that surrounds them then it is likely that the values dominant will tend to revolve around the monetary alone, above all other qualitative riches.

What does a traveller really seek?

So, what does a traveller really seek? To answer this question we arrived to a simply furnished up-stair home, located in front of the park in Jaffna, known popularly as Tony's Garden House - Backpackers Inn. There is a swing in the garden and a very large painting of birds and leaves on the outer wall of this abode and one could be tempted to sit on the swing before entering.