Business Performance of Boutique Hotels after Easter Sunday Attacks in Western and Southern Province in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The tourism sector of Sri Lanka had rapid growth and was identified as the largest source of income in Sri Lanka. Easter attack, which took place in April 2019, resulted in a severe hit to the boutique hotels in Sri Lanka. The purpose of conducting this study was to identify how boutique hotels in Sri Lanka are working to regain their business performance after the Easter Sunday attack. The data for this research were assembled employing a strategy of qualitative data. Data were collected through twelve face-to-face semi-structured interviews and analysed based on content analysis by using Word cloud. Many employees in the tourism sector have lost their jobs due to this attack. The majority of the owners stated that now they are focusing more on local customers instead of foreigners. Owners use social media platforms and special discount packages (credit card and visa card discounts) to attract local customers. Banks and financial institutions have offered some loan schemes for hotels to regain their performance. The outcomes will offer assistance for the individuals who are predominantly or indirectly related to the boutique hotels of the tourism industry in Sri Lanka. In addition to that, this research will assist proper understanding about if the hoteliers have to face crises like the Easter Sunday attack again how they manage their business performances by using considerable factors of boutique hotels in Sri Lanka. Since the revenue generated from the tourism industry is more important to the Sri Lankan economy, the respected authorities can focus more on the boutique hotel sector and make arrangements to re-establish the lost revenues in the Sri Lankan economy. The main limitation was that only two provinces were taken, which would not be adequate to give an overall representation of all the population. Therefore, it is recommended for future researchers to increase the sample size and focus on more provinces/areas when doing further research on this topic