Sustainable Operations and Destinations: Ella Jungle Resort

Assignment Description: This task requires students to reflect on how the course affected them. Reflective essays analyse the course material theories, core concepts and ideas presented by the lecturer and then summarizes the writer's feelings about the material covered during the term. The report must not repeat the SDGs (covered in Assessment 1) and the 3 pillars of sustainable development, TBL and CSR (covered in Assessment 2). In order to demonstrate your sound understanding of the concepts covered during the semester, at least 50% of your report should emphasise on one of the key concepts listed below and relate it by applying the concept to an actual case (it could be a hotel, tourist destination, country, etc). For example, if you choose to write about the Butler’s Sequence, then relate the concepts to a tourist destination. 

Running Head: ST 0
ustainable erations and estinationsS Op D
lla ungle esortE J R
tudent etails(S D : )
2/20/2020

ST 1
Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Reflection on the Ella Jungle Resort..........................................................................................2
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................7

ST 2
Introduction
This reflective paper is focused on sustainable operations and destinations so that
reflection on the learning acquired from the course can be integrated effectively. With the
help of this reflective essay, I will analyse the course material theories, ideas as well as core
concepts presented by the lecturer during the course. I will also summarize my feelings about
the material covered throughout the course and term as well. The reflective paper is going to
demonstrate my understanding of the concepts learned during the term with the help of the
selected topic as the ‘Ella Jungle Resort’ (EJR), Sri Lanka. The chosen destination will be
assessed from the sustainable tourism perspective with the help of the concept of Butler’s
Sequence. I have learned so many concepts during the course such as responsible production
and consumption, Kuznet’s Curve, sustainable and responsible tourism, GSTC, the
economics of externalities, any many more in the context of sustainable operations and
destinations. While learning about current affairs topics during the course, I realized that
Butler’s Sequence theory took my attention and hence I decided to reflect on a tourist
destination of Sri Lanka as EJR. Thus, by reflecting on the same I will summarize all of the
learning from the future career motive.
Reflection on the Ella Jungle Resort
During the course, I have studied a lot about sustainability and thereby sustainable
tourism and operations with the help of CSR, TBL, and sustainable development goals along
with Butler’s Sequence. Here, I am going to apply Butler’s Sequence theory on sustainable
tourism for EJR, Sri Lanka. In general, the theory suggests that almost all tourist resorts
usually go through a 6 stage model which is termed as the tourism life cycle model (Butler,
1980). In this context, the theory given by Butler states that these tourist resorts initially are
developing on a very small scale and then they get larger and superior til stagnation occurs.
Here, stagnation is having the meaning of no further growth in terms of flowering and
moving in the context of resorts. Reading and studying about EJR, Sri Lanka made me feel
that world tourism is lagging in sustainability and thereby the world needs to address the key
issues related to sustainable tourism. I believe that we all need to cautious about sustainable
tourism because future generations will not be able to see present earth creatures and
destinations (World Tourism Organization, 2020).

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In the context of Tourism Life Cycle Model, six key stages were proposed by Butler
as follows:
 Exploration – I learned that whenever hardy, as well as adventurous people, looking
for something different for the holiday purpose then they find a place which is special
from the perspective of aspects like natural beauty, culture, history or landscape. It
happens because there might be no tourist services available. On the contrary, another
reason can be the local people are not ready to be involved in tourists’ money-making
activities (Barcelona Field Study Centre, 2020).
 Involvement- in this context, I have learned that this stage occurs whenever local
public start to notice that increased numbers of people are coming to the local area. In
this way, involvement also starts businesses to offer accommodation, food, guides,
and transport as well.
 Development – apart from this, as per the Butler’s Sequence concept giant companies
begin to observe the emerging potential of the tourist destination as a tourist resort.
Therefore, investors and business organizations start investing a considerable amount
of money in the chosen region. In this way, it makes the numbers of tourists hike
dramatically as well as massively. Thus, the development stage as per this sustainable
tourism theory typically expands job opportunities for the local public. It is worth
knowing that the development stage increases jobs in both tourism-related jobs as
well as in construction and services (Barcelona Field Study Centre, 2020).
Source: (Butler, 1980)

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 Consolidation – my learning related to the module suggesting that the chosen tourist
resort has not reached this stage of Butler’s six sequence model. In this context,
during this stage, the local economy is most probably dominated by tourism during
the consolidation phase (Barcelona Field Study Centre, 2020).
 Stagnation – as the Ella Jungle resort has not even reached the stage before it hence
the resort is having core competition from other resorts. Thus, stagnation can further
be divided into 3 key parts include rejuvenation, decline and stabilisation. Therefore,
from the stagnation point of view, there are 2 basic possibilities of decline or
rejuvenation (Butler, 1980).
Moreover, I got to know that the chosen Ella Jungle Resort is located in one of the
most scenic places in Sri Lanka. The destination is popular for the international tourists as the
tourist resort is typically nestled on the banks of the famous and beautiful Kirindi Oya River.
My study and exploration of the chosen tourist place suggest that it is surrounded by streams,
pristine jungles, as well as mountain springs. In addition to that, the location of the EJR is
approximately 250 Km away from the BIA (Bandaranaike International Airport). Besides, the
two stages of Butler’s Sequence the location of the EJR allow global business guests as well
as tourists to be a part of natural creatures (The Telegraph, 2020).
The reasons why the chosen destination needs to be protected include its natural
appearance, location, budget price, and untouched ecological presence within the Sri Lanka.
It has been found that it is situated in between 60 hectares of jungle and is 6 km away from
natural pools as well as walking trails at Ravana Falls. My personal research and exploration
about the Ella Jungle Resort are suggesting that this resort is 18 km from Dowa Rajamaha
Viharaya, which a temple is carved into a cliff face (Sri Lanka Ecotourism, 2020). Thus, the
resort is carrying huge importance from the future sustainable tourism perspective. As we
know, the tourist resort must be easily accessed and visited from the national and
international transport stations hence this resort is having a favourable point here. As per my
evolved opinion based on Butler’s Sequence, the Ella Jungle resort is going to enter the
development stage of Butler’s Sequence very soon. In order to support my above statement, I
would like to mention that Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport is only 76 km away from
the tourist resort situated in the nation Sri Lanka. In addition to that, I have observed that the
chosen place is having rustic rooms in open-air cabins which are built from reclaimed
materials such as feature wood terraces, floors along with shared bathrooms. In addition to

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that, this resort has upgraded cabins with en suite bathrooms as well as 4-poster beds (Ella
Jungle Resort, 2020).
In my opinion, this place is in favour of sustainable and responsible tourism for the
future and hence people must visit the place while taking care of its natural beauty too. If we
all will take care of such natural beauties then no tourist resort will reach the stage where the
stagnation stage occurs. Furthermore, based on (Ella Jungle Resort, 2020), my research
suggests that the chosen place is having a casual restaurant having bamboo furnishings and
many more air refreshing plants. On the other hand, the resort in Sri Lanka offers so many
adventurous activities like zip lines, trekking, bird watching, meditation and mountain biking
(Ella Jungle Resort, 2020). Such adventurous activities are acting like the key selling points
of the touristic destination. I personally believe that this tourist destination can be prevented
from going into the stagnation stage with the help of support given by local government, local
public, local tourists, international tourist agencies and Sri Lankan tourism (The Telegraph,
2020).
While learning into the module, I have realized that tourism growth has been
increased dramatically in Sri Lanka and also tourism has become one of the biggest industries
of the world. In my opinion, sustainable tourism must be promoted as tourism actually plays
an important role in any national economy like Sri Lanka (The Telegraph, 2020). The theory
is given by Butler also suggests that tourism destinations must be lucrative so that tourists
from all across the world can visit these destinations irrespective of the stages of
development. In addition to that, I have seen that socio-political ideologies in relation to
sustainable tourism always suggest that tourism is essentially required for developing and
developed nations worldwide (World Tourism Organization, 2020).
During research on the Ella Jungle resort of Sri Lanka, I have learned that Sri Lankan
tourism has typically grown at a fast rate which can be measured by several destination
factors. Such factors may include tourism services, tourism attractions, and touristic
infrastructure (Budeanu, Miller, Moscardo, & Ooi, 2016). I have observed that resorts are
able to increase the number of tourists at different levels include local, national and
international as well (Barcelona Field Study Centre, 2020). My evolved opinion based on this
research is suggesting that tourism has successfully helped Sri Lanka to establish
international relationships amid people all across the world. Specifically, this research on the
Ella Jungle resort has explored that sustainable and responsible Sri Lanka tourism will be

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able to create relations among tourists from the host destination nations and developed
nations (Butler, 1980).
With the help of Butler’s Sequence application onto EJR, I can now say that the study
of tourism development in Sri Lanka effectively illustrates broader aspects of sustainable
tourism (Lu, Nakicenovic, Visbeck, & Stevance, 2015). I found that tourism in Sri Lanka has
successfully emerged from being a spontaneous event to an individual plan in the pursuit of
national economic development.
In addition to that, this module made me learn about Butler’s Model. I felt that the
simplified version of Butler’s sequence model is far simpler to understand the evolution of
tourism in Sri Lanka (Ella Jungle Resort, 2020). In this context, the growth of tourism in any
tourist resort can be observed with plotting against time. I can now mention that Butler’s
graph is the best way to know how tourist destinations change across the time span. I would
like to mention that 5 key stages of Butler’s Sequence are traditional, take-off and
development, peak growth, stagnations and rejuvenation or decline (Sri Lanka Ecotourism,
2020). I am suggesting that one tourist destination can be saved from going into stagnation or
declination. I personally feel that to some extent this is true that every holiday destination
goes through stagnation, declines and rejuvenation yet there are so many ways to preserve
touristic destinations from stagnation and worse (GDRC, 2020).
Furthermore, I have learned that the Butler Sequence Model is a useful method that
can be used to study the evolution of tourism across time. In addition, I have found that this
model is highly significant for knowing at which stage of the development model a settlement
happens at a particular point in time. Furthermore, based on (Numpty Nerd, 2020), I have
sensed that Sri Lankan tourism is a major source of income for the nation’s government.
Moreover, I can now mention that tourism has grown in importance as a major generator of
wealth because of below listed key factors:
1. The increased leisure time
2. A hike in disposable income; it refers to the money which is available to the family or
individual once all fixed costs, like utilities, mortgage or rent, and food, have been
paid for ( Luiz & Sanchez, 2018).
3. The increased ease of travel with expansions into the land as well as air
transportation.

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Conclusion
In this way, it has been found that the key facts, tourism development and future
needs of the Ella Jungle resort have been identified with the help of Butler’s Sequence
concept. Thus, this reflection made me realized that EJR is one of Sri Lanka’s remarkable
natural gifts and is attracting the increasing number of tourists these days. I also observed that
the EJR is greatly blessed with the breathtaking diversity as well as the beauty of the core
nature. The reflective essay has been helpful to know that the chosen tourist place as EJR
typically includes a richness of natural creatures and rivers. Moreover, I would like to
mention that the chosen resort in Sri Lanka is actually experiencing the life cycle stage of
involvement as mentioned by the Butler. Thus, for protecting the resort from going into the
chosen tourist resort needs to be preserved and protected as per the theory of sustainable and
responsible tourism.

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References
Luiz , M., & Sanchez, A. V. (2018). Strategic Management in Tourism (3rd ed.).
Oxfordshire: CAB international .
Aragon-Correa, J. A., Martin-Tapia, I., & de la Torre-Ruiz, J. (2015). Sustainability issues
and hospitality and tourism firms’ strategies: Analytical review and future directions.
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(3), 498-522.
Barcelona Field Study Centre. (2020). Applying the Butler Model to Tourism in Sitges and
Calafell. Retrieved from Geography Field works:
https://geographyfieldwork.com/ButlerModelSitgesCalafell.htm
Budeanu, A., Miller, G., Moscardo, G., & Ooi, C. (2016). Sustainable tourism, progress,
challenges and opportunities: an introduction. Journal of Cleaner Production, 111,
285-294.
Butler, R. (1980). THE CONCEPT OF A TOURIST AREA CYCLE OF EVOLUTION:
IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGEMENT OF RESOURCES. In R. Butler. Canada:
Canadian Geographer.
Ella Jungle Resort. (2020). ABOUT ELLA JUNGLE RESORT. Retrieved from Ella Jungle
Resort: https://ella-jungle-resort-ella-sri-lanka-en.ww.lk/about-us.html
Lu, Y., Nakicenovic, N., Visbeck, M., & Stevance, A. (2015). Five priorities for the UN
sustainable development goals. Nature, 520(7548), 432-433.
Numpty Nerd. (2020). The Butler Model of Tourism Development. Retrieved from Numpty
Nerd: https://www.numptynerd.net/tourism-the-butler-model.html
Sri Lanka Ecotourism. (2020). ECOLOGICAL, RESPONSIBLE AND SUSTAINABLE
HOLIDAYS IN SRI LANKA. Retrieved from Sri Lanka Eco Tourism:
https://srilankaecotourism.lk/index.php
The Telegraph. (2020). The perfect holiday in Sri Lanka – our expert's ultimate two-week
itinerary. Retrieved from The Telegraph:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/sri-lanka/articles/sri-lanka-best-
holiday-tour/

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World Tourism Organization. (2020). Defining Sustainable Tourism. Retrieved from World
Tourism Organization: http://www.gdrc.org/uem/eco-tour/sustour-define.html
World Tourism Organization. (2020). SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. Retrieved from
UNWTO: https://www.unwto.org/sustainable-development