Abstract:
Tourism industry comprises a complex network of stakeholders and groups those who are having special interest in the tourism development, management and marketing for a particular destination. Tourist guides are one of the most significant stakeholder parties who play a critical role in the tourism industry. Among tourist guides Beach Boys those who are classified as non-licensed tour guides can be identified as one of the key influential stakeholder group in the industry. Therefore, the aim of this research is to critically investigate and evaluate both direct and indirect impacts of Beach Boys on tourism industry. Since the functions, roles and responsibilities of various middlemen engaging in the tourism industry are varying from many aspects this study focuses the impacts of Beach Boys upon three main perspectives, namely the tourist, tourism establishment owners, and the host community perspective. The study was conducted in Hikkduwa as it is ranked as one of the popular tourism destinations in Sri Lanka. And the convenience sampling technique was used to collect the first hand data and several other secondary sources including police reports, newspaper articles, books etc; were also used to gather information for this study. Moreover, both open ended and 5 point Likert scale questionnaire were developed to collect accurate data and the Qualitative approach was used for this study. The study revealed that most tourists' likely to get beach boy services as it's cheap and easy to get. The findings of this study would be beneficial for the policy makers and the tourism industry to recognize and to minimize the negative impacts while creating a positive destination image.
Keywords: Beach boys, stakeholders, impacts, tourism industry, destination image
