The Hindu Business Line : SriLankan Air mulls new scheme to woo tourists post-tsunami

"FALL in Love Again." This will be SriLankan Airlines' concept as it is all set to unveil a new package to woo tourists back to the island nation after the devastation caused by the tsunami on December 26.

Stating this here today, Mr G.T. Jeyaseelan, Head of Commercial, SriLankan Airlines, however, declined to provide details about the package except saying that it will be introduced in February and be more attractive than any of the schemes in vogue now.

The November-March period is the peak tourist season for Sri Lanka and the tourist traffic now is just 50 per cent to 60 per cent of what it normally is, according to him. On an average, about 1,000 tourists are now coming into the country daily now.

Following the tsunami, almost 35 per cent of the tourism infrastructure was affected and as of last Friday, 80 per cent of the room and infrastructure at the resorts and hotels has been restored. By October, the authorities hope to fully restore the tourism infrastructure.

Mr Jeyaseelan said there had been not much of a fall in tourist arrivals from the Indian sub-continent, West Asia and South-East Asia. However, tourist arrivals from Europe and Japan had fallen by almost 50 per cent. There were no health issues after the tsunami and nations that had issued travel advisories had also revoked them. In the last three days, there was an increase in the number of tourists visiting Sri Lanka.

Last year, Sri Lanka received 5,50,000 tourists and was targeting 6,00,000 tourists this financial year. However, as a result of the tsunami, the number was expected to be just about 5,00,000, he said.

Mr Jeyaseelan said the largest number of tourists to Sri Lanka was from India with 75,000 tourists. There was scope for increasing this number.

SriLankan Airlines would shortly commence services to Ahmedabad and introduce services to Kolkata later in the year. With this, the airline would operate to 12 cities in India. The airline had increased its capacity to Chennai by 75 per cent and planned to increase its capacity to India by 20 per cent during 2005-06. At present, it had over 10,000 seats a week to India and this would go up to 12,000 seats next financial year.

To a question, Mr Jeyaseelan said the airline had used up its bilateral rights to the metropolitan cities in India and had scope for increasing the number of services to secondary cities such as Tiruchi, which it would do. The airline was also looking at whether it could start services to Coimbatore.

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