Tea Tourism as a Marketing Tool: A Strategy to Develop the Image of Sri Lanka as an Attractive Tourism Destination

Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries as well a provider of employments over to 100 million populations around the world. Niche tourism refers to strategy that specific tourism product personalized to meet the needs of a particular tourist segment. Hence Tea tourism has been identified as one niche Tourism segment emerged with novel concept of sustainable and nature based eco-friendly tourism. Research objective is to identify the potentials to promote Sri Lanka as a tea tourism destination with special reference to Badulla and Nuwara Eliya districts by investigating the tea tourists’ attitudes, expectations and destination attributes and local community involvement for tea tourism. Sample consists with 173 tea tourists and structured questionnaire and semi structured interviews were adopted in primary data collection. The numerous potentials have been identified which will be in capable of promoting tea tourism. Destination image building with the brand name of “Ceylon Tea”, global promotional campaigns with the collaboration of Social Media Marketing tools as well introducing sustainable tourism experience packages has been recommended.


Introduction
Travel & Tourism is one of the world's largest economic sectors as providing direct employments over to 100 million as well enormous indirect employments for different sectors and regions (World Travel and Tourism Council). International tourist arrivals grew by 4.4% in 2015 to reach a total of 1,184 million in 2015, according to the latest UNWTO World Tourism Barometer. With the gradual development of the tourism sector, people willing to engage in new tourism experiences and concepts as niche tourism emerged as a new concept (Fernando, 2014;Fernando 2015). Niche tourism refers to how a specific tourism product can be personalized to meet the needs of a particular tourist segment as Tea tourism has been identified as one niche Tourism segment emerged.
Tea could be stated as a beverage, a plant, an art, a meal service, an export, an agricultural product, an industry, a religion or a dedicated pastime (Yang, 2007) and tea is an integral part of food service (Jolliffe, 2007). Tea plant had its origins in China and later introduced to other countries and adopted as a beverage in different cultures and owning tea traditions. A peripheral industry built up around tea focuses on the production of goods for a tea-loving public, including tea accessories, books on tea, and a variety of tea-themed gift wares. Tea combination has developed as an art (Shalleck, 1972) and in some societies, such as Japan, as a religion. For many, the romance and history of tea and the experience of consuming tea is a pastime (Pratt, 1982) as includes collecting, either associated with the purchase of tea and related items such as teapots and teacups, or the seeking out and build-up of tea experiences, individually or as part of an organized tea tour.
Tourism noticeably has the potential to enhance the brand image and marketing of tea-producing destinations as contemporary tourists seek out authentic and unique experiences related to the appreciation and consumption of the beverage and tea encourages both consumption and the development of relationships. Climatic and geographic conditions have formed appropriate possibility for tea cultivation and historical evidences proved that tea tree has a long history dates back to the late 19th Century. Ceylon Tea and Tourism are inseparable words as Sri Lanka's tea growing areas are undoubtedly the most beautiful places in the island as well attractive tourism destinations (Ceylon Tea Land, 2013).
Potentials for the development of the segment is enormous with the strengths as the tourism industry needs to push to strengthen Tea tourism being practiced to day to reap the optimum results and benefits, particularly with regard to the focused marketing efforts aimed at the high spending visitors. End of thirty year civil war in Sri Lanka, there can be seen a remarkable development in tourism industry and a new paradigm has been introduced to focus more on Tourism income to the economy rather increase the tourists' arrivals (Fernando,2015). The nearly 150 year old tea industry was the main source of Sri Lankan economy for several decades (TRI, 2008) and Tea was the number one export product of Sri Lanka. Further the study will be important to industry, to identify potentials of Sri Lanka to become a tea tourism destination as limited literature available.
Based on the above arguments this study attempts to address following research questions.
 What are the potentials of Sri Lanka to become a tea tourism destination?
 What is the relationship between attitudes, expectation and destination attributes?

Research Objectives
The objectives of this study are:  To identify potentials of Sri Lanka to become a tea tourism destination.
 To identify relationship between attitudes, expectation and destination attributes.

Literature Review
Tea being the most consumed beverage in the world after water, as the offering of a cup of tea is a universal sign of hospitality, in either a home or commercial hospitality setting (Walton, 2001). For hospitality, tea consequently serves as both a symbol and a resource with considerable potential for the provision of commercial hospitality. Home based traditions transfer over to the offering of tea in commercial hospitality settings. In china, they have great tea culture that creating a comfortable and positive experience for guests. Tea was brought into Europe in the early 17 th century, and the Dutch East India Company played a very important role (Han, 2007). In the 18 th century, tea became the most popular drink in England, and in the 19 th century, afternoon tea came into English routine life (Pettigrew, 2001;Han 2007) and late 17 th century, tea became mass product imported from china to Russia (Han, 2007).Tea has been a part of the history and economy of Sri Lanka since it was introduced in the late nineteenth century (Martin, 2007) and this was the main source of economy for several decades (TRI, 2008). Known as the 'Isle of Tea' (Heiss & Heiss, 2007), the country has six major production regions as Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, Uva, Rathnapura, Dimbula, and Galle. Jolliffe (2003) studied on tea history, tea heritage and the tea industry in relation to tourism, mainly from the perspective of the relationship of tea to travel and of tea attraction supply. Tea destinations were identified as exhibiting characteristics of tea-related-history, traditions, ceremonies, cultivation, production, manufacturing, services, events and festivals. Further Tea tourism was defined as 'tourism that is motivated by an interest in the history, traditions and consumption of the beverage, tea' (Jolliffe, 2007).
Tea estates are part of the countries' diverse developed attractions. Sri Lanka has rich resources for supplying the tea related tourism experiences as nature walks in tea gardens, character accommodation informer tea factories and tea planter bungalows, tea tasting and retail in café's overlooking tea gardens and tours of producing factories. Scholars identified the tea industry must invest on value addition rather exporting in bulk (Athukorala, 2008) and it will pave way for new niches. Gunasekara and Momsen (2007)  Identifying the significance of the Tea tourism as well community involvement as a whole this study focus on tea tourism from the demand by targeting the present tourists.

Research Design and Methods
Accordingly, the overall methodology of this study is structural questionnaires and follows survey method. The research questions provide an insight to understand and analyze the research problem. According to the nature of research questions, the study consists of both descriptive and inferential parts. The following figure shows the conceptual framework for this study.

Hypotheses of the Study
Following hypotheses are developed according to the conceptual framework.
 H01: There is a relationship between Attitudes on spending of Tea tourists and Destination Attributes.
 H02: There is a relationship between Expectations on service providers and Destination Attributes.      Coefficient of determination (R 2 ) in Table 6, suggested that 30% of total variation of destination attributes is described by attitudes on spending on tea tourists and 70%

Operationalization
of unexplained variation is in this model. It appears that the model was fitted in fairly manner as explained variation is less than the unexplained variation. This implies that there are many variables can be related with destination attributes.    Table 9. Results of Table 9 is suggested that fitted regression model is significant at 0.05 level of significance (p-value= 0.000). The fitted regression model can be summarized as follows.

Destination Attributes = 3.665 + 0.075 Expectations on service providers
Validity of the fitted model is checked at 0.05 level of significance and all error term assumptions are satisfied. Therefore, the fitted model can use for prediction.

Model
Coefficients P-value

Conclusions and Recommendations
This study has taken the attempt to identify the potentials of Sri Lanka to become a tea tourism destination with special reference to Nuwara Eliya and Badulla districts.
The profile of the tea tourists, Tourists attitudes, expectations and Destination Attributes has been taken into consideration in order to identify the potential. Contribution to the local community from tourism is considerably less. Moderate number of people agreed that community people are benefiting from tea tourism.
Tea tourism helps to improve the economic conditions of the local community who engaged as to improve household income of local people. Lack of capital, seasonality, government taxes and regulations and lack of infrastructure are the major problems faced by majority of community people who are engaged in tourism businesses.
Therefore, following policy recommendations to the sector development as to achieve socio-economic development;

Develop proper information base;
 proper information base for tea tourism destinations, directions and activities/experiences for the tourists International marketing plan to popularize tea tourism destinations and packages;  Ceylon Tea brand name could be a marketing tool to attract European market  Eco-friendly and sustainable tourism practices could be more marketable  Social media marketing tools to attract more tourists

More leisure activities in tea tourism destinations;
 offer more tea tourism activities as plucking tea leaves, visiting tea plantation and knowledge sharing with tea plucking people, offering tea powder which is made by tea leaves plucked by tourists themselves and tea tasting