Marking World Tourism Day 2012, Kanchana Wickramasinghe discusses a pioneering new study that attempts to measure the impact on the environment of Sri Lanka’s booming tourist hotel sector.

The country currently has around 14,800 hotel rooms. The SLTDA estimates that to cater to a growing tourism sector, an additional 40,000 rooms need to be built. Thousands of rooms in the East alone are to be built. With such goals for greater occupancy capacities, the pressures on the transport link from Colombo to the East become tighter. The key question then is , will the transport infrastructure grow in line with this boom in tourism that post-war Sri Lanka intends to achieve?