Abstract:
Tourism is an area in which research has been frequently conducted; however, research on social marketing and tourism has been limited and has been neglected over the years especially in Sri Lanka. This research is focused on two main objectives. The first objective is to identify the effect of social marketing when selecting Sri Lanka as a tourist destination. The second objective is to identify the significance of location when attracting tourists. The data were collected by using a questionnaire distributed among 141 local and foreign tourists who have visited the given locations. A multiple regression analysis was used for the analysis and all the variables were significant. According the results of the study, social marketing does have an effect on popularizing Sri Lanka as an attractive tourist destination among tourists; this thereby has an impact on the experience of tourists.
