Exploring Factors Affecting the Competitiveness of Kandy City as a Heritage Tourism Destination

Abstract

Sacred city of Kandy is well known in all over the world because of its heritage value. Therefore, it has become a renowned tourism destination point in Sri Lanka, but still there aren’t any sustainable image to position it as a heritage tourism destination. Hence it is necessary to construct a sustainable heritage destination marketing model which will enable to enhance and sustain destination competitiveness in Sacred City of Kandy. In order to create a successful destination marketing model, study focused to determine key factors of distinctive destination points and it attempted to fill the paucity of identifying key factors to determine Kandy as a distinctive tourism destination point. From the purpose of fulfill above mentioned research gap, identified research questions were, what are the key factors determining competitiveness of Sacred City of Kandy as a heritage tourism destination? what is the significance of each factor for competitiveness of Sacred City of Kandy as a heritage tourism destination point? what is the relationship between the factors and the competitiveness of Sacred City of Kandy as a heritage tourism destination? According to research questions, established objective of the research was to identify the factors affecting to the Sacred City of Kandy as a competitive heritage tourism destination. A comprehensive literature survey carried out with the use of books, journals and articles in the aim of finding existing knowledge on various factors which are affecting to the competiveness of a tourism destination. Then primary data of the study was collected through a questionnaire survey. Population of the study were the tourists in all over the country. The sample of the study was 108 tourists (respondents), who visits to the sacred city of Kandy as heritage tourism purposely. Sampling method was judgmental sampling. Data analysis was done using Statistical International Conference on Real Estate Management and Valuation 2017 ICREMV 2017 37-54 Package for Social Science (SPSS) software. According to the result of data analysis, it concluded a tourist who arrives to city they highly consider on destination management factor. In additionally, core resources and attractions on city and the level of safety and security of the destination also increase the competitiveness of the city, because of that destination gets the competitive advantage as a heritage tourism destination among other cities in the country. Keywords: Heritage Tourism, Destination Competitiveness, Sacred City Of Kandy, Model of Destination Competitiveness