An empirical investigation on the demographic characteristics of specialized visitors and their preferences to use up-country tea plantations as nature tourism sites

Abstract

Up country tea plantations have been emerging as sites for nature tourism for both local and foreigntourists who were earlier used to visit traditional tourism sites (e.g. Anuradhapura, Pollonnaruwa andSeegiriya) predominantly. In light of this, evaluation of what characteristics associated with thesevisitors. and to which extent, have an impact on a selection of nature tourism sites available in theseplantations as their "first choice" has become important, since that information can be used to formulatea market-friendly environmental policies to promote it.

Those "specialized visitors" (i. e. those who visit an Up Country tea plantation for the first time basedon the information they received from an external source and those who repeated) were selected asthe cases for data collection (n = 120). A semi-structured questionnaire was used in this respect atseven purposely-selected entry points to the plantations located in the Nuwara-Eliya district.

Both qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques were used. The results indicate that, ingeneral, young people (i. e. 56% of sample within 20 - 29 years); those who married (59%); and withaverage house hold size of three to four members (84%); with high income level (i.e. 43% of sampleabove the Rs. 50,000 per month). and possess a degree or equivalent (60%) decided to enjoy thesesites. Majority of them were employed at private sector enterprises as middle to top-level managers.In terms of reasons for their visit, about 63 percent of visitors indicated aesthetics/scenic beautyfollowed by bird watching (52%), forest trekking (46%), mountain climbing (44%), hiking (42%) andsafari (30%). Regarding the existing facilities at these sites, about 60 and 91 percent of local andforeign visitors, respectively, were satisfied. Several visitors (45%) proposed that the existinginfrastructure facilities to be improved. With respect to entry fee, 65 percent of the visitors preferredto make the payment as a whole and rest as a small entrance fee with an additional fee for eachactivity. The results highlight that government agencies should cooperate with plantation companiesto promote nature tourism as a viable non-crop diversification mechanism.