Paper Title
Barriers to Community Participation in Tourism Businesses: A Case Study of Local Community Inarugam-Bay

Abstract
Sri Lanka tourism has been growing with significance annual growth rate for past five years period starting from 2010 and it has ensured that tourism will be the most impressive industry in future Sri Lankan economy. The government also has given priority tourism through their economic agenda. The government has initiated several tourism projects by targeting the prosperity of local community, but most of these projects haven�t reached the said objective due to some exiting barriers from community perspective. This study has been conducted to identify these existing barriers in rural community in Arugambay destination. It was revealed that there are operational, structural and cultural barriers to community participation in the tourism businesses in many developing countries although they do not equally exist in every tourist destination. Further, while these limits tend to exhibit higher intensity and greater persistence in the developing world than in the developed world, they appear to be a reflection of prevailing socio-political, economic and cultural structure in many developing countries.The study used mix method to explore the existing limitations of local community to take part in tourism businesses. Data was collected from the local community of Arugam-Bay and conducted personal interviews and distributed questionnaires to gather required information. Results of this study depict that barriers to community participation exists at the destination and the most significance barriers were cultural barriers while some of the operational barriers also existing. Keywords� Barriers, Community Participation, Tourism Businesses.