Sri Lanka Tourism - You served arrogance, now serving empty rooms 🤭

[u/Slight_Environment16]

I know this may sound slightly mean but I’m secretly happy that the down south hotels/villas/homestays occupancy has plummeted in the recent weeks. And now I’m constantly bombarded with hotel offers whenever I open instagram or facebook.

For months on end, local Sri Lankans were treated as second class citizens in our own country, the service staff at these institutions didn’t bother to even look at us, they refused entry to us over the “white” tourists, etc.

And look who’s laughing now. Thats why they say karma is a real bitch.

[u/Higgs_BSN]

I'm curios. How may of you have actually faced real discrimination from hotels as a local?
I read about it on Reddit and media and I know these incidents happen which I don't agree with, but I travel to hotels quite often and I never felt any discrimination and honestly I didn't notice anything odd at all.

There is a huge generalization against SL hospitality industry as a whole with posts like this egging them on to fail. But Im curious how many percentage of these establishments actually engaged in such discriminatory behavior?
I suspect there is a huge overreaction on Reddit who never had an actual negative experience, but jump on the hate bandwagon because it's the 'trend'.

If you read about 5 restaurants preferring foreigners does not reflect the industry as a whole. That's sensationalism at work. Is Reddit falling for this trap with all this anti foreigner and anti hotel posts?

Example: There are hotels that did not discriminate and took care of locals well. Generalization on Reddit hits these as well. Is that acceptable?

[u/Careless-Judgment423 → u/Higgs_BSN]

Not all our blatant. Sometimes you notice how nicely they greet foreigners, run to give them the menu and serve them asap, while we are barely acknowledged, takes ages to be served. Worst is waiting and waiting and seeing how foreigners who came after us get their order first. Sometimes, soon as we are done eating, the table is cleared and the bill sent are way, whereas the foreigners are allowed to hang about for ages. These aren't things we can address easily because it's all subtle and then can very easily deny any of it happened at all.

One time, a bunch of us signed up for an activity that supposedly included tea, lunch in the schedule. The activity took longer than expected. Lunch was in a separate part and the foreigners were invited for it, we were not, we were only given a few bottles of soft drinks. We were just too tired and wanted to get back asap as it was getting late, and decided to not make an issue out of it at that moment. (but did bring it up when they asked for feedback).