Abstract:
This study attempted to identify the potentials of promoting luxury rail cruise tourism as a
novel tourism strategy in the up-country rail line to attract more tourists. Apart from that,
the study also examined what were the main challenges of implementing rail cruise
tourism in Sri Lanka. There are many tourist destinations such as Nine Arches Bridge, the
Damodara Railway Loop, Nanuoya-Idalgashinna station which are located along the upcountry railway track. Therefore, the initialization of such rail cruise itinerary will attract
many tourists to those cities and that will generate thousands of revenues to the Sri Lanka
Railway as well as to the GDP of Sri Lanka. Both the empirical and knowledge gaps are
filled by this research. The study used explanatory sequential mixed method. Data were
collected through key informant interviews and a survey was conducted for 100 tourists
using a convenient sampling technique. Mainly, descriptive statistics and thematic
analysis were used to accomplish the objectives of the study. The database was developed
in the SPSS software interface. The result of the study revealed that Sri Lanka has the
potentials to promote rail cruise tourism and tourists had a positive perception of rail
cruise tourism in Sri Lanka. However, the study also emphasized that there are several
barriers related to infrastructure, organizational and technological barriers in relation to
promoting rail cruise tourism in Sri Lanka. In conclusion, the study highlights the
possibility of promoting rail cruise tourism in Sri Lanka, and hence government
intervention to resolve the barriers related to rail cruise tourism is highly recommended.
Keywords: Rail-cruise tourism, Niche tourism, Sri Lankan railway, Sri Lanka tourism
