The Hindu Business Line : Sri Lankan Airlines to promote India as a leisure destination

SRI Lankan Airlines plans to promote India as a leisure destination and will increase its capacity to 70 frequencies per week, from the present 60, by the middle of this year, according to Mr G.T. Jeyaseelan, Head (Commercial), Sri Lankan Airlines.

On a long term the airline is also studying the possibilities of flying to Goa, Ahmedabad, Kozhikode and Agra, he said.

Mr Jeyaseelan said that the airline at present operates flights to nine destinations in India, with Hyderabad going online a week ago. He said that there was a commitment on the part of the airline to use all its capacity to promote India as a tourist destination. It also made simple business logic to bring traffic into the country.

Leisure was the mainstay of the airline and last year there were 90,000 visitors to Sri Lanka. The annual international ad spend is SL Rs 500 million (Rs 30 crore).

The airline also planned to introduce the twinning of destinations between Colombo and south India and will start operations between Male and Kochi soon. Sri Lankan Airlines had earlier twinned Male with Colombo and this was a huge success, he said. Both these destinations will be promoted as one package as they complement each other.

The airline operates two flights on the Colombo-Bodhgaya-New Delhi sector. This will become a direct flight from September, he said. The travel season on this sector is between September and April and this route has become popular with Sri Lankans, who are predominantly Buddhist. The airline is also promoting the destination in Thailand and Singapore with convenient connections. There is also some interest shown in Japan, he said.

Sri Lankan Airlines has also launched two packages promoting Bangalore for healthcare tourism and Chennai for cultural. In Bangalore, the airline has tied up with Sagar Apollo Hospital and has come out with a package of about SL Rs 30,000. This package is being promoted not only in Sri Lanka but also in the UK and Germany. The Chennai package is around SL Rs 27,000 and one gets four nights and five days.

The airline is also planning to promote tourists from Germany to visit Kochi on the platform of `wellness' tourism - for ayurvedic treatment.

Mr Jeyaseelan said that Sri Lanka now had a partially `open skies policy' and this would become fully open by 2005.