Abstract:
This study focuses on the hidden motives of domestic female travelers to have pleasure travel
experience in Sri Lanka. The tourism industry of Sri Lanka is becoming increasingly important in
terms of its contribution to the GDP, employment generation and related economic consequences.
Even the government of Sri Lanka has given a prominent place for the tourism industry in their
economy. After defeating terrorism in 2009, tourism showed rapid growth rate and both international
and domestic travelers travel in large numbers.
Today, women play a dominant role in the world tourism scenario. There is a shortage of research
looking specifically at women and their pleasure travel behavior. Females are thought to have diverse
expectations to have pleasure travel, play a major role in decision making and have different attitudes
toward travel. A number of travel motives were derived through the literature review and eight
motives were chosen to analyze the strength of decision making power of travelers.
The researcher did this study as a case study by focusing on the Kandy tourist region and gathered
required information through questionnaires, and simple method of analysis was employed to identify
the strength of each and every motive factor. The findings showed that a large number of female
travelers travel to “Spend leisure time with their family”, “Release working stress”, and “Visit friends
and relatives” while a small number of female travelers have traveled to “Strengthen the family
bonds” and “Do it as a annual hobby”.
