Tourism Revival Strategic Marketing Planning: A Case of Sri Lanka Tourism

Abstract: Tourism is one of the most dynamic and fastest growing global industries. However, tourist destinations are defenseless from unforeseeable disasters. Recovery shows a sluggish and delicate manner to which stepwise guidelines can not be formulated due to diverse internal and external environmental conditions. Thus, a systematic approach is inevitable for a tourism revival following a sudden disaster. This paper explains a systematic approach and analytical means for tourism revival strategic marketing planning with a combination of SWOT matrix and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). SWOT technique examines both internal and external factors of tourism industry. The combination yields analytically determined priority factors and make them commensurable. The prioritized SWOT factors are used to formulate alternative recovery strategies using TOWS matrix. Ultimately a comprehensive priority for each strategic alternative with respect to SWOT factors was evaluated using strategic evaluation matrix. This method was applied for the tourism revival process of Sri Lanka following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Results indicate that proactive communication strategy and isolation strategy with effective marketing promotional strategy were the best strategies that could have been implemented for a booming tourism revival process. The accuracy of the proposed hybrid method was established by comparing with then implemented strategies