A wellbeing perspective of Indigenous tourism in Sri Lanka

Abstract

COVID-19 has impacted severely on all sectors of the tourism industry. However, only a handful of studies have investigated how Indigenous communities and their tourism operations have coped during the pandemic. We offer a Spaces of Wellbeing perspective that is novel in the context of Indigenous tourism research and addresses alternative frameworks that consider the wellbeing of Indigenous communities. This should be central to our understanding of sustainable tourism development and the building of resilient tourism operations. Through a collaborative research partnership built on trust, and respect for traditional social ranks, explored this framework in conversational walk-along interviews to raise how the wellbeing spaces of the Vedda people in Sri Lanka were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords

• Indigenous tourism
• Sustainable tourism
• Wellbeing
• Vedda community
• COVID – 19
• Sri Lanka