The Government should step forward urgently to resolve the current Visa on arrival issue or else Sri Lanka will fall far short of its tourist arrivals target of 2.3 million, said President, Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators (SLAITO) Nishad Wijetunga at a media briefing at the Ceylon Chamber with leading Travel Associations
“If the current negative trend continues Sri Lanka would not even reach the two million mark in the number of arrivals and already the number of arrivals has dropped from around 5,000 per day to around 2,000,” he said.
He said that they successfully obtained a court order to remove the Visa on arrival system implemented by the VFS on August 2, and revert back to the old system operated by Mobitel, Informatics with Sampath Bank as the payment partner.
“However, the Immigration Department is purposely delaying this and coming out with various excuses and now a manuel visa on arrival system is implemented.”
He said that due to this soon airlines will not take in passengers for Sri Lanka as if visa is not given they have to fly that passenger back free. “This may also result in adverse travel advisories as well.”
Managing Director at Aitken Spence Travels Ltd, Nalin Jayasundera said that though Sri Lanka tourism spent over Rs. 2 billion to promote Sri Lanka it was useless as long as this visa bottleneck was not cleared.
He said that though Sri Lanka’s destination marketing campaign says ’You come back for more’ a tourist experiencing this hassle at the airport will never come back.
A stalwart in the industry, Hiran Cooary said that due to lack of staff at the airport a tourist has to spend a minimum of two hours and this bad experience will kill the tourism industry.
He said that in contrast to Thailand where a free visa was granted and he travelled last week he could clear immigration in less than five minutes and they don’t even ask to fill any forms.
President City Hotels Association Shanti Kumar said that though the commissioner of immigration is saying that the old system would be implemented by next month they do not have any faith in it.
“What we are asking is to implement the court order as the old operating trio are ready to implement it,” he said.
Sri Lanka Association of Professional Conference, Exhibition and Event Organisers (SLAPCEO) President Imran Hassan said that the former ETA system worked perfectly well and there were no delays or complications. Though there is a Cabinet decision to offer free visa on arrival for 38 countries there is no clear date as to when it’s going to be implemented.
