Unveiling the potential: exploring prospects and challenges for a high-yielding tea tourism segment

Tea tourism is a striking segment around the world due to the widespread tea lovers. Even though there is a huge potential to attract tourists for tea tourism while generating economic benefits for the host community, it has not developed properly as a product in Sri Lanka. Hence, the main purpose of this study was to identify the prospects and challenges of Sri Lankan tea tourism industry to make it a high-yielding tourism product. The mixed methodology was adopted as the research design and conveniently selected a sample of 350 (of local and foreign tourists) and 10 service providers involved in tourism businesses to collect primary data. Descriptive statistics, regression analysis and content analysis were used to meet the study objectives. The findings highlighted that push motive factors are more influencing for tourists to visit tea tourism establishments than pull motive factors. Moreover, tea tourists’ overall perception has a significant positive impact on their perceived experience about tea tourism. This author further stated that perceptions might be of two different kinds: external stimuli (resulting from the evaluation of destination qualities) and internal (personal) stimuli (depending on how the person wishes to perceive that destination). Further the researcher has identified attractions towards tea industry, demand to Ceylon tea, available activities and resources and future plans of the service providers as prospects in tea tourism industry in Sri Lanka. Moreover, the researcher has identified challenges in tea tourism industry under political, economic, environmental, operational and technological challenges.