Sri Lankan tourism will earn a record income of over USD 4.3 billion and move up the ladder to be the second highest forex earner to the country, beating apparel export revenue, said Director General, Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA), Nalin Perera at a press conference on Friday.
He said that tourism earnings in the first six months have already passed the USD 1.5 billion mark.
The major achievement for this year is the launch of PR and Digital campaigns in India, China, UK, Germany and in France for one year and for six months.
This will create more awareness about Sri Lanka to the travelling public in these countries focusing winter season and coming 2025.
Chairman, Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, Chalaka Gajabahu forecast that this year the country will surpass its best ever tourism arrival figure of 2.2 million people recorded in 2018.
All these promotional activities have contributed towards achieving 1,289,693 tourists to Sri Lanka as of August 14 from main source markets such as India, the UK, Russia, Germany, France and China while countries such as Australia, USA, Netherlands and Poland have shown a strong potential for future growth.
“With all these achievements in hand, Sri Lanka Tourism is hopeful that it will achieve the tourism target of 2.3 million tourists this year.”
With the bouncing back from the past economic crisis, the main promotional activity was the ‘’Seeing is Believing’ ’campaign which was continued this year by inviting nearly 60 foreign media personnel including travel Influencers and bloggers, generating publicity for Sri Lanka Tourism to the value of over USD 550 mn.
SLHS to open hotel in own premises
For the first time, the Sri Lanka Hotel School (SLHS) will open a three-star standard 12-room hotel in the hotel school premises for both local and foreign tourists, said Chairman, Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management (SLITHM) Shirantha Peiris on Friday.
It will be branded as Samudra Hotel and would be run by trainees of the hotel school and will initially operate as a Bed and Breakfast hotel.
“Our rates would be very competitive and would be on par with other City hotels,” he said. The rooms are equipped with wifi, cable tc bathtub hotel and cold water and a balcony with a unique view of the Indian ocean.”
He said a unique system has been introduced where the investment of the SLITHM would be almost zero for this project.
“We hope got on board both Jetwing Hotels and Theme Resorts to completely refurbish some of the rooms and in return they would give space for branding.”
Peiris also said that they hope to have a 24 hour reception and are looking at introducing additional rooms including suites.
He also said that they will soon Open Ocean Pub at the same venue and revenue from this would be ploughed back to the tourism Ministry.
