Sri Lanka hosted its biggest ever tourism forum on Thursday with 150 international travel and tour operators and 160 Sri Lankan operators attending the event. Organised by the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB), it has been timed to coincide with the ongoing Commonwealth Summit in Colombo.

“This is to holistically promote tourism and get the maximum advantage from CHOGM,” Bhashwara Senaka Gunarathna, Chairman of the SLTPB and Sri Lanka Tourism Development authority, said.

Operators from 13 countries, including India, attended the event. Gunarathna said that though Indians continues to contribute the biggest chunk of tourists to Sri Lanka, 70-80 per cent of the new tourists to the country are from China, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

“Around one-third of the operators at the Forum are from Russia,” he said, hailing it as a good sign for Sri Lankan tourism. There were 65 Russian travel agents/ operators, and around 10 Indian operators at the event. “We believe we can get more from India, but our bread and butter is from Eastern Europe,” he said.

Sarangi Thilakasena, Assistant Director of the SLTPB, said: “Our emerging targets are China, Japan and Russia, and there is rigorous promotion in these areas. In the next couple of years we have planned international road-shows to promote tourism in Sri Lanka. In India we had two big promotional events in Mumbai and Bangalore this year. We are planning one in Delhi in the first quarter of 2014.”

“We have a target of reaching 2.5 million tourists by 2016,” Gunarathna said. This is a part of the “Mahinda Chinthana – Vision for the Future” that hopes to position Sri Lanka as a “Wonder of Asia.”

Plan of action

According to him a five-point strategy has been put in place to reach the target. This includes approaching emerging markets for tourism, product development (infrastructure and services) with tourism in focus, promoting domestic tourism, making approval systems easier, and engaging in joint and viable promotion. “Various departments generally promote on their own, individually, but we took a cabinet decision to get the resources together and go out in a big way,” Gunarathna said.

Several departments such as the board of investment, export development board, Sri Lanka Airlines, Sri Lanka Tea Board, Sri Lanka Handicrafts board and Sri Lanka Cricket board are working together, he said. According to Thilakasena, “There has been a collective decision and everyone is heading in one direction.”

In addition to the Forum, a trade, tourism and investment expo called ‘Reflections of Sri Lanka’ will also be on till November 17 at the Ape Gama (Folk Art Centre), Battaramulla, next to the Sri Lankan Parliament.

Product promotion

The event is co-organised by the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Industry and Commerce and has close to 800 stalls featuring sectors such as tea, apparel, gems and jewellery, spices, food, rubber products and ICT/BPO, Thilakasena said.

According to a press release, 100 participants from the SME sector of the tourism economy and 50 large-scale tourism stakeholders were a part of “Reflections of Sri Lanka” to promote their products and services.

Around 1,000 foreign buyers from countries such as India, China, Canada, the UAE, the UK, Iran, the Philippines, Egypt, Pakistan, Singapore and Seychelles are expected to visit the event.

(This writer is in Sri Lanka at the invitation of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau)

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