Tourism is not measured by how many people arrive.

It is measured by what remains — in communities, in the economy, and in the environment.

That distinction matters, especially in a country that has perfected the art of counting arrivals while quietly losing the plot on outcomes.

Sri Lanka today is chasing applause. Arrival figures are rolled out with the enthusiasm of a breaking-news ticker — monthly highs, year-on-year growth, percentage gains delivered as proof of revival. Yet, almost simultaneously, the State is preparing an audit of tourism finances to locate “leakages”, while a former Finance Minister publicly observes that the numbers simply do not add up. Add to this the persistent anxiety over unencumbered foreign exchange reserves, and it becomes clear that something is structurally wrong beneath the celebratory headlines.

When the same individual presides over both the Presidential Secretariat and the Treasury, the heat rises quickly. This is not political commentary; it is institutional physics. When power is concentrated, contradictions surface faster — and louder.

Into this combustible mix walked Eric Solheim, back in Sri Lanka, speaking at a symposium on Sustainable Tourism in Kandalama, in the heart of the Cultural Triangle — arguably the closest thing Sri Lanka has to a living laboratory of what tourism can be when it is done right.

Predictably, his presence triggered mixed reactions. Solheim is no stranger to controversy in Sri Lanka. Sections of the public remain sceptical — sometimes fairly, sometimes reflexively — viewing him through the prism of past roles rather than present arguments. But ideas deserve to be judged on merit, not memory. And on this occasion, Solheim did something quietly subversive: he shifted the conversation away from arrivals and toward retention.

Retention of value.

Retention of dignity.

Retention of ecosystems and livelihoods.

That alone was refreshing.

The Arrival Illusion

Sri Lanka’s tourism discourse has been hijacked by a single metric: how many landed at Bandaranaike International Airport. This obsession is understandable in a post-crisis economy desperate for foreign exchange. But it is also dangerously incomplete.

A tourist who arrives, stays two nights in a foreign-owned chain hotel, eats imported food, books a foreign-owned transport service, and departs having left little more than plastic waste behind — that tourist flatters arrival statistics while hollowing out the economy.

This is the leakage problem policymakers now admit exists — belatedly, but openly.

When a former Finance Minister – Ravi Karunanayake – says the math doesn’t add up, he is not committing heresy. He is stating what anyone with a balance sheet can see: high arrivals are not translating into proportional reserves, nor into broad-based prosperity. If tourism were truly “booming” in economic terms, the Treasury would not be anxiously hunting for dollars, nor commissioning audits to find out where the money went.

“The applause is loud. The cash register is not.”

Kandalama as Counter-Argument

Which is why Kandalama matters — not as a venue, but as a philosophy.

Built into rock rather than imposed upon it, Kandalama remains one of the few tourism developments in Sri Lanka that understood sustainability before it became a PowerPoint phrase. It did not sell luxury as excess; it sold restraint as value. It embedded itself in the landscape rather than displacing it.

Speaking there – at  Sri Lanka’s one and only All-Female run hotel, Amba Yaalu – Solheim’s argument found its natural habitat.

Sustainable tourism, he argued, is not anti-growth. It is anti-extraction. It is not about fewer tourists; it is about better tourism — tourism that pays communities, preserves landscapes, and keeps foreign exchange circulating locally rather than exporting it through invisible pipes.

These ideas are not radical. They are simply inconvenient to those addicted to headline numbers.

The Wickramasingha Model

Sitting alongside Solheim – at the Exclusive Symposium on Sustainable Tourism – was Chandra Wickramasingha, a veteran hotelier with 16 properties across Sri Lanka, quietly demonstrating what sustainable tourism looks like in practice rather than theory. 

His model is unglamorous to the spreadsheet crowd but powerful where it counts. Local employment. Local sourcing. Local ownership. Limited foreign exchange leakage. Properties that sell a Sri Lankan experience, not a generic international template with a coconut-tree garnish. And truly committed to zero-plastic. Even if, as he admitted, it hurts his bottom line. Back in 2009 at the end of the hostilities, he started to build his Easter coast masterpiece, Maalu Maalu. It opened in 2011 as the first hotel on that coast after the conflict. 

This is tourism that leaves something behind — skills, income, pride, continuity.

And that is precisely the problem. Sustainable tourism does not lend itself to instant applause. It compounds slowly. It requires patience, policy consistency, and the courage to resist short-term vanity metrics.

The Audit That Should Not Surprise Us

The decision to audit tourism finances should not be read as an admission of failure. It should be read as an overdue recognition of reality.

Leakages occur when policy is incoherent. When incentives reward scale but not substance. When arrival numbers are celebrated while value retention is ignored. When tourism promotion is divorced from fiscal outcomes.

Sri Lanka does not suffer from a lack of tourists. It suffers from a failure to capture value.

And that failure is not accidental. It is the predictable outcome of prioritising optics over architecture.

Beyond Solheim

This op-ed is not an endorsement of any individual. Solheim is not the story. Nor is Wickramasingha. They are illustrations — one of ideas, the other of fearless implementation.

The real story is whether Sri Lanka is mature enough to reframe tourism as an economic instrument, not a public relations exercise.

Sustainable tourism is not about saving trees while the Treasury bleeds. Nor is it about filling hotels while communities stagnate. It is about aligning incentives so that what benefits the tourist also benefits the host country — materially and measurably.

The Choice Ahead

Sri Lanka stands at a familiar crossroads. One path continues the applause economy — more arrivals, louder headlines, deeper audits, greater confusion. The other path is quieter, slower, and far more demanding. It requires asking uncomfortable questions about ownership, leakages, incentives, and outcomes.

It requires measuring tourism not by who comes — but by what stays.

Foreign exchange that remains unencumbered.

Communities that are not hollowed out.

Landscapes that are not auctioned for short-term gain.

Tourism will not save Sri Lanka by volume alone.

It will only help if it is designed to endure.

The applause can wait.

The accounting cannot.