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Tourism is a fast growing industry in Sri Lanka. Since gaining independence from the British in
1948, Sri Lanka has continued to attract foreign investors and tourists to the island. However it
is the post war period that the sector has featured prominently a rapid growth. The arrival o f
tourists increased rapidly and passed the elusive one million mark in 2012 and increased further
in 2014 and 2015. Consequently, the tourist earnings also increased and now the sector occupies
the position as the third largest foreign exchange earner to the country after overseas
remittances and textiles and apparel exports. It is expected to increase the number o f arrivals up
to 2.6 million by 2020.
However, as a growing sector in the economy this sector faces several challenges and Human
Resource Crises have been the top among others. The shortage o f well-trained tourism
personnel coupled with high rate o f turnover continued to be a major issue for the industry with
the situation worsening with many new hotels coming up in the country and absorbing the
existing experienced personnel.
Therefore, the broad objective o f this study is to examine the role o f Human Resource
Management in finding suitable solutions to assist the industry to deal with HR issues
successfully. In fact, as the first phase, this study attempts to develop a research model fo r action.
Specifically, this study is designed to examine the role o f Human Resource Management (HRM)
practices in developing tourism sector in Sri Lanka and to propose a theoretical model that can
be used to embark on a study to measure the real impact o f HRM on the performance o f tourism
sector in Sri Lanka. The proposed model suggests a significant correlation that exists between
HRM practices and firm performance in tourism sector. Further, the model will help better
understand the missing link through which HRM practices will make the impact on firm
performance in tourism sector in Sri Lanka
