Thema Collection’s Deewara has opened near Tangalle amid the sort of southern coastal landscape that belongs in the pages of Condé Nast. But the more interesting story may be the people who were there long before the tourists arrived.
There is something wonderfully calm about ‘Deewara’.
The sea, the boats, the palms and the fishing community provide a picture of southern Sri Lanka that tourism brochures have been selling for decades. But Thema Collection is attempting something rather different here.
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It is not asking the local fishing community simply to become part of the scenery.
Too often tourism arrives in beautiful places and the people who made those places what they are become silent spectators. They wave at visitors, offer the occasional shy hello and then watch prosperity pass their front doors.
At Deewara, the intention is that they participate in it.
That philosophy has become something of a signature across Thema Collection properties: tourism should have roots in the community in which it operates. Local people are not props added to create “authenticity”. They are stakeholders in the experience.
And nowhere could that matter more than in a place called Deewara.
The fishing community provides the rhythm of this coastline. Boats leave and return. Nets are prepared. Fish comes ashore. Generations of knowledge about the sea exist within families living beside it.
For the international traveller seeking something beyond another beautiful room beside another beautiful beach, that human connection may ultimately become Deewara’s greatest luxury.
The surroundings are spectacular. The setting is wonderfully calm. The photographs will almost certainly be irresistible.
But the real picture is bigger.
Tourism works best when the visitor goes home richer for the experience and the community next door is richer for having welcomed them.
Be that as it may.
