- RETRACE Hospitality Founder Chalana Perera on understanding the value of Sri Lanka’s resources
We have recently been to some touristy places in Sri Lanka and have been quite appalled over how we Sri Lankans treat our tourist sites. There’s little regard for what this paradise isle has given us, scant respect for our wildlife and historical sites, and zero commitment to do anything to improve. We Sri Lankans seem like frogs in a well, happy to spew forth meaningless rhetoric about tourism numbers increasing, but doing little to improve our product sustainably. There are countless urgent matters in the tourism industry which need to be attended to and with competition heating up, if we don’t do something soon, we can bid our cash cow goodbye. On ‘Kaleidoscope’ this week is RETRACE Hospitality Founder Chalana Perera, who worked in hospitality in Switzerland for years and returned to Sri Lanka with an infectious enthusiasm to work on regenerative hospitality in Sri Lanka – essentially on a singular mission of making Sri Lanka’s tourism greener and cleaner. He expanded on some of the many urgencies prevalent in the industry.
Following are excerpts of the interview:
Q: What would you say are the 10,000 urgencies facing the tourism industry today?
There may not be 10,000, but there are a multitude of urgencies. With regard to Sri Lanka’s tourism, we need to focus on protecting the island and all its resources, including human resources, ahead of promoting it, or managing Sri Lanka ahead of marketing it. That’s really the key here.
What does that entail for the public sector and the private sector, to the business community and the state? It’s really about understanding the value of the resources we have.
Number one is the natural capital – the natural assets and getting a solid understanding of the value of those assets. Thereafter, determine how best to manage those destinations, looking at identifying carrying capacities at a micro-destination level.
Several studies have been done on carrying capacity at a national level; it’s time to now focus on the micro-destination level. There’s an urgency on actually applying a moratorium on building new accommodation in places like Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, and surrounding the Yala National Park.
When you prevent the development of accommodation, it will then manage the flows of tourism and footfall and actually help uplift the quality of the existing stock. This is tackling one of the multiple urgencies, when you start with that culture of discipline. Then there’s an appreciation of value and how to focus on value over volume or quality over quantity. This is really the crux of the urgency we have.
The human resources factor will be supported by that as well. Right now, anecdotal evidence suggests one in two employees in the sector in Sri Lanka, if given the opportunity, would look to migrate purely because of the cost of living. We have people who are leaving, but then we are inviting people to come visit; we’ve got the formula fundamentally wrong.
Q: We also have competition. We may not have a similar product, but there is competition and they’re doing very well. What are we doing wrong?
It is about looking at it differently and not looking at who Sri Lanka competes against. Rather, we have to look at the fact that we are an independent island and a sovereign nation. There’s a very rich history, where Sri Lanka has always been placed geographically in an interesting position for thousands of years, far before colonisation. We were always a hub for trade and transition and transaction, so we have had a very strong identity.
But post-1960s, when tourism began developing post-independence and the economy opened up, we started to think of tourism as a marketable commodity and tried to replicate Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, or Dubai. We’ve always had this positioning and identity crisis. It’s not about trying to emulate what is being done in other places, but trying instead to reinforce what is unique to us.
We have a culture of people who like to be proud about being Sri Lankan but that’s not being demonstrated in our product and tourism and how we manage the destination. We’re really obsessed with bringing brand ‘X’, brand ‘Y’, and experience ‘X’, experience ‘Y’ that you get in other countries and leaving behind the valuable, high-quality, impact-oriented local entrepreneurs who are actually trying to create a difference.
There are some excellent examples operating in Sri Lanka for over 30 years – locally home-grown products and experiences, accommodation, food concepts, wellness retreats – multiples that have existed way before the tourism development boom. We need to go back to our roots and to our core, and from a business perspective, this will become a very profitable model as well.
Q: You espouse regenerative hospitality and tourism. What exactly is regenerative hospitality, and how does it fit into Sri Lanka’s context?
Regeneration is actually a term rooted in biology and in science. I’m not a scientist or a biologist by any means, but essentially it’s looking at how to improve and heal with what is within. As a philosophy, regeneration provides an excellent opportunity to improve and fix systems that are broken, using resources that exist within.
Q: If you were to draw up a plan for the industry, what would that plan entail?
What we have is a complex operating environment where every stakeholder has a different vision and a different intentional idea. If we talk to people in government and they’re within those multiple schools of thought, they will all have different visions. Different bureaucrats versus politicians have different visions. So that’s been Sri Lanka’s struggle, particularly post-independence. There is actually no central authority.
While there are powerful individuals and powerful seats of governments from a regulatory perspective, when it comes to positioning the country and the island for us as locals, it is quite fragmented and devolved. The business community is the same. When developing a plan for an entire island, which has so many different stakeholders with different agendas, different pools of capital and different history in terms of operating and experience, the plan needs to be zoomed down on a micro-destination level. Then, we have to start master planning those micro-destinations that have been exploited and abused. That’s the only way.
If we’re going to start at a national level, it’s going to be too tricky. For example, take a look at the Department of Wildlife Conservation and national park management. Some parks are well managed, the majority are not. Any park that has had successful revenue generation through tourism is primarily exploitation.
I would have scientists, ecologists, specialised experts, and professionals to spearhead, lead, and inform any plan for any destination and its carrying capacity, even in urban environments, even the city of Colombo. Take some mega projects that have come up around the Beira Lake. People can’t even walk in some of those areas, the smell is so bad. But those properties cost upwards of half a billion dollars individually to build. Planning is an imperative. The rural environment has very similar dynamics.
Getting the scientists in and getting the micro-destination managed before market perspective is a priority. It’s about informed decision making, based on science as to how we open up the destination and operate the destination for locals and then tourists.
Q: What about data? How important is that in decision making?
This is a component that’s key and much linked to data-driven decision making. Less than 20% of the registered room inventory in this country contributes to professional data aggregators internationally. Of that, a large majority, about 50% of that, 20% of the registered rooms, which is just 20% of the total inventory (so tiny numbers), are actually chain-scale affiliated properties, brand ‘X’ and brand ‘Y’. So we are lacking data-driven decision-making across the board.
That opportunity is very low-hanging because the younger generations are switched on. They get numbers. They get technology. We need to inculcate that from a regulatory perspective. Actually, right now, Sri Lanka needs to make the performance of hotels and restaurant businesses transparent. For example, what are the average daily rates? What are the occupancies? We don’t want to go into the P&L to see operating costs. But what are the top-line numbers? And make that transparent so there’s a common consensus. Quite a number of properties and businesses are actually struggling, but they might not show it.
Banks too have a role to play – who provides the funding and the lending? A lot of small-scale entrepreneurs that are cash-to-cash managing their businesses are doing an excellent job. Many businesses which are not financially prudent but have good relationships with banks get away with a lot. How that distorts the industry is also quite tricky from an accommodation and built environment perspective.
One of the key elements I keep reiterating is people. We think of product, but actually our product is rooted in our people. If we have an unhappy population who themselves can’t afford to go on holidays and we’re trying to sell holidays to people from wealthier countries or nearby countries who might not be as wealthy, we have a fundamental problem, right there.
The planning needs to really prioritise the well-being of Sri Lankans and make sure that Sri Lankans too can enjoy the destination we are selling to others.
Q: Would you say Sri Lanka has a vision for the tourism industry or are we just happy just sitting and counting our numbers?
There are certain stakeholders who are very happy to count numbers and those numbers typically are numbers of arrivals and, in some cases, billions of dollars of annual receipts. The calculations of both those are questionable. At least we have a somewhat of a high-level culture of statistics and discipline in keeping track of numbers. But those numbers are not very accurate or representative. However, at least this notion of ‘okay, let’s look at numbers’ is prevalent, although that’s one specific stakeholder.
Now, if you talk to people in the environmental community or those managing their properties at the grassroots level and are very protective of their lands and for their own well-being, they have water, healthy soil, and good food – is there a co-existence and a good balance with wildlife in those areas? They will not be people counting millions of arrivals and billions of dollars.
The bottom line is different stakeholders have different visions. I think the unified vision really needs to be quality of life for the locals and how that is measured. What we need is a massive education and awareness campaign that touches each stakeholder where they’re at.
Big business community is as challenging as the government. Look at the property development sector as well. Sri Lanka’s tourism industry has become a property development game and a rush to develop property. It’s quite similar across the world. However, the vision for property development of the island is very questionable right now and is really diminishing the quality of life for locals, the product, the ecosystems, and natural resources. And don’t forget, it’s a huge financial strain on the economy.
(The writer is the host, director, and co-producer of weekly digital programme ‘Kaleidoscope with Savithri Rodrigo’.)
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(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.)