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.
