The year 2025: Crafting Sri Lanka’s Future Through Storytelling and Strategic Marketing
View(s):Sri Lanka, in 2025, requires a transformative shift in policymaking across the economy, education, and all other sectors. We need different strategies to transform Sri Lanka›s economy into a value-driven economy. In that context, the role of the subject domain of Marketing cannot be underestimated. In this article, we are focusing on how “storytelling” can be used to enhance tourism with different examples related to our destinations.
What is Storytelling?
Nalin’s Insights: Bridging Marketing and Economic Trends
Storytelling is the vivid description of ideas, beliefs, personal experiences, and life- lessons through stories or narratives that evoke powerful emotions and insights(Serrat,2008). The concept of storytelling can be considered as one of the effective methods for many purposes. Marie Hattar, a Former Forbes Council member in an article published in 2022 explains the importance of storytelling. “Storytelling is powerful because it creates an emotional connection between a company, its products, and its customers. Effective storytelling increases engagement between a brand and its audience, which helps drive conversions and, ultimately, revenue growth (Hattar, 2022). In that article, he emphasises that the chief marketing officers in companies should be “Storytelling Champions” and that Storytelling should be the “DNA of Marketing”.
Destination Marketing through Storytelling
As we know Sri Lanka is a gifted country with all natural resources and a country with rich civilization and culture for thousand years. The Cultural and Historical Narratives fabric can be used for many aspects to attract tourists, export marketing, and all other strategies. We can see how this can be linked by looking at best practices. If we discuss with tourists representing new generations they are always willing to see value creations other than product or service characteristics. As per studies done on destination marketing and storytelling, companies and organizations in the tourism industry extensively use storytelling as a strategic tool to attract customers. This approach is particularly impactful in destination marketing, where creating compelling narratives helps establish a unique and memorable identity for a place. Storytelling in this context often draws on the rich patterns of local history, culture, and the life stories of the community, crafting a vivid picture that resonates with potential visitors.in Sri Lanka, we always have some stories in history with great value. The Sigiriya is a classic example of this. As per medium.com in the article “All About the King Who Built Sigiriya” we can see how Sigiriya is associated with King Kasyapa.“Sri Lanka boasts a rich history and ancient indigenous culture that spans over a thousand years, and several relics of that past still remain today. Perhaps one of the most intriguing of these remnants lies in Sigiriya, the Lion Rock in the island’s Central Province. Hailed today by UNESCO as the eighth wonder of the world, the ruins of the ancient palace atop Sigiriya’s rock fortress hide the tumultuous past of its monarch, King Kasyapa I(Medium.com). we can have a theme like “The Lion Rock: A Tale of Kings and Lost Civilizations” and produce some videos, and blogs (even with collaborations with international experts ) to gain maximum usage of our rich history and civilization. This is one way the storytelling will give you a competitive advantage in tourism.
Even certain traditional stories also can used to create a unique identity for destinations. We can use Ravana’s Trail–Link locations like Ella and Seetha Amman Temple with the Ramayana epic.
In storytelling, Sharing real traveller stories to build emotional connections also can be considered as important strategy.One example would be a UK cricket fan who watched the cricket match between Sri Lanka and England in Galle Fort and wrote something about the destination and his experience. With the current context, there is a need for Leveraging Digital Platforms with Interactive content and even we can Create virtual tours, AR experiences, and videos that narrate stories of destinations.(Example: A VR experience of climbing Sigiriya or exploring ancient ruins)
Conclusion
There is a need to have different strategies to reposition Sri Lanka as one of the best travel destinations in the world. This article only focused on the usage of storytelling for destination marketing. Anyway, the same can be used for exports and even for any businesses in the local context as well. Nevertheless, there should be a tracking system to track Visitor Engagement(Track interactions with storytelling campaigns through social media analytics and feedback surveys) to see the impact of the campaign as well. We have seen there are many promotion campaigns in Sri Lanka but no “impact assessment “.This can be considered as one of the really important aspects of evaluating the performance of the campaign. Even from the holistic perspective, there should be a mechanism to measure the Economic Impact(to Measure the increase in tourism revenue and local community benefits on this as well)
I believe the year 2025 is one of the important years for all citizens of the country to decide our future and the future of the next generations. All should get together and build a country to have a well-recognised passport for Sri Lanka. Integrating storytelling into destination marketing, Sri Lanka can create a unique and memorable brand identity, attracting more tourists and enhancing its economic growth.
(The writer is a Professor in Management Studies at the Open University of Sri Lanka You can reach Professor Abeysekera via nalinabeysekera@gmail.com.)
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