Abstract:
Travelling to visit places with Underwater Cultural Heritage is becoming a
significant niche tourism type worldwide. Because of its remarkable position in
the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka has always been a hub for sea trade. This makes
Sri Lanka possess an abundant of Underwater Cultural Heritage. There lies a
great amount of underwater cultural artefacts beneath the sea near Galle as the
city has served as a harbour for a long time. This study was conducted to identify
the contribution of Underwater Cultural Heritage towards tourism in Galle. The
objectives of the study were, to identify the role that Underwater Cultural
Heritage plays in tourism in Galle, to identify the destination capabilities of
Galle to fulfil those requirements and to understand the ways that Underwater
Cultural Heritage can be benefitted from tourism. The qualitative approach was
adopted in this study. Data were collected from tourism service providers
around Galle, maritime archaeologists and museum officers through semistructured
interviews. The collected data were analyzed using the content
analysis method. Major findings of this research include the strengths of the
Galle area in terms of underwater cultural heritage, the great interest of tourists
towards underwater cultural heritage and current weaknesses in the
management of these values in the field of tourism. It was revealed that both
tourism and underwater heritage could be mutually benefitted because of each
phenomena’s presence through an integrated approach.
