Sri Lanka Tourism launched its global campaign, ‘’Sri Lanka – You’ll come back for more’’ at the Cinnamon Grand Hotel recently.
The event was held under the patronage of the Minister of Tourism, Lands, Sports and Youth Affairs Harin Fernando.
Sri Lanka Tourism officials and key line agencies and tourism industry stakeholders, including Ambassadors representing Diplomatic missions, local and international media correspondents were present.
Chairman of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, Chalaka Gajabahu outlined how Sri Lanka Tourism has moved forward despite its various challenges
The importance of the 360-degree marketing campaign was highlighted as Sri Lanka Tourism has not initiated a global campaign for a considerable time.
He said,”If you look at last year and what we have achieved up to today, it’s an amazing development. Last year we ended up with 720,000 and we are already at 1.3 million, which is an amazing achievement.”
The setting for the event was tastefully created to represent all the tourist attractions of all the provinces, which will be promoted in key markets.
CEO, Ogilvy, Sudesh Sundhara Moorthy said, “We wanted to develop a campaign which was called the “Check In” campaign which communicates that Sri Lanka is safe, and ready to welcome tourists, thus without any hassle from the North to the South and East to West, and this campaign we developed as an interim campaign.
“After this our most important task was the brand positioning strategy and the brand campaign. The three pillars which we looked at was, that Sri Lanka was a compact island, and that was taken as an advantage. “Second, Sri Lanka has a diversity of experience and though we are an island, we give much more than Sun, Sea and sand. It was specifically mentioned that Sri Lanka should not be a bucket list destination.
“The third was that our experiences are so authentic. No other island of this size can match what we can offer. We also wanted to look at what the travelers were looking for, and the perspective of the potential traveler’ he explained. His presentation as further emphasised by playing two promotional videos which had been specially created for this initial campaign. Minister Harin Fernando said, “Sri Lanka has done so well on its own, thanks to the industry stakeholder who have spearheaded all the campaigns on their own, but I think Sri Lanka Tourism has done a well thought out campaign. All of us have to play a role to get people to visit Sri Lanka and to ensure the experience is such they will come again. Sri Lanka has much more to offer than what people know about Sri Lanka.”
The function was used as an opportunity to recognise the Pekoe Trail award that was presented by British Guild of Travel Writers at the WTM last month. Chairman, Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority Priantha Fernando, made a brief description about the award. He thanked those who supported in this endeavour.
A replica of the award was presented by Minister Fernando to the team which contributed a great deal to the project.
