Marketing strategies for empowering wellness tourism in the post Covid -19 pandemic era in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The tourism industry in Sri Lanka capitalizes the significance of the wellness industry by offering travel experience about wellness and health care products to tourists. The main objective of this study is to investigate marketing related challenges faced by the wellness tourism industry in Sri Lanka in the post COVID – 19 era. Wellness product, which is an activities oriented service delivery process, including medical healings, elders’ care taking, traditional food, recovery activities and sports, and health maintenance and promotion. These have unique features and by using different groups customers can be targeted. An inductive approach has been employed to investigate marketing related challenges that are useful in understanding the social phenomena of the world through their own experiences. Interpretive research philosophy has been employed to examine how participants experience the world based on their views. Twenty seven participants, from various segments of wellness service providers and those who are legally engaged in wellness tourism, in the data collection process, have been chosen by using snowball sampling techniques. Data were analyzed by using discourse analysis methods. This study identified the following four major challenges faced by wellness operators: downfall the demands for wellness tourism products, high competition and lack of diversified wellness tourism activities, limited marketing activities and lack of service infrastructure development. In addition, this study recommended the following four key strategies and remedies to overcome those constraints: involving market extension and expansion, increasing diversified wellness tourism activities, promoting service infrastructure and encouraging application of IT in service delivery processes.