Financial Times

Buy in to share the spirit of Sri Lanka
By Random AccessMemory (RAM)

This week ...
While struggling for years to draw hordes of tourists to this land, Sri Lanka - buoyed by the peace process - is now faced with a shortage of hotel with arrivals sharply rising.

The authorities are also preparing a mega public relations exercise aimed at raising the number of visitors further. Going down that road, RAM has a few practical suggestions to make.

Promoting Sri Lanka as a destination where a traveller can discover his or her true spirit is to be the platform for a three-year public relations campaign now on the drawing boards for tourism. The couple of million dollars worth campaign may have reflections of the Singapore girl, replaced with an Ayurvedic guru, proposed to be played by a leading business personality. The assumption is that the run of the mill 'tourists' want comfort but for less payment of dollars. Those travelling to experience the 'Spirit of Travel' on the other hand, do not mind a bit of chaos on the roads and discomfort, but will account for higher yields.

After the SARS epidemic was barely over, Singapore launched a major media and public relations campaign with a sense of urgency, positioning the island nation as the now place to be. It replaced the earlier platform of 'Live it up in Singapore' with 'Singapore Roars' to woo back the tourists. Malaysia's 'Truly Asia' platform served both as a tourism promotion campaign as well as an international PR and promotional campaign for that modern nation.

It rode on the success the destination achieved first through the internal campaign of 'Malaysia Boleh' meaning 'Malaysia Can', but spent hefty millions of dollars. Thailand had its share with 'Amazing Thailand' where again, millions of dollars were spent to position the many exotic offerings of the destination on different brand extension platforms. These campaigns do not come cheap. They can indeed do a whole lot of good to boost the image of the country and morale of the people, when handled right.

In late 2001, only months before the change of government here in Sri Lanka, a substantial amount was also to be 'spent', with a hastily and discreetly put together 'campaign' by a UK based company with ties to the Emirates. The campaign had been designed to make a fast recovery from the crisis tourism then faced and was to be executed with the blessings of the highest in the land. Except for a few almost disastrous PR events, it never got off the ground. But we learn that contractual obligations have to be met, with payments due for commitments made.

In each of the campaigns in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand the success factors were the believability of the message and the buy-in of the community at large both through internal PR and actual participation. The timing of campaign execution and the availability of resources to follow through with the campaigns were the other critical success factors. The proposed campaign, we understand is also to have a strong domestic programme element to create tourism awareness with the community with sponsorships coming from the business community.

What RAM believes we need, is not just creation of awareness, but a total buy-in by all segments of the community. Can a nation that is still divided and still wounded share its spirit with the rest of the world? For the message to be believable, we need to ensure that we get our house well in order. We need not only watch the indices of the economy, where hotel stocks are appreciating and interest rates are falling.

We also need to deal with the many millions who are outside the sphere of influence of the share market and the retirees whose savings are now making lower yields. It is up to the business community to think beyond a mere profitability equation in singing praise, to the social responsibility aspects as well. This is an essential prerequisite, if we are to develop and retain a spirit worthy of sharing with the rest of the world.

The buy-in has to be holistic, not a mere tapestry of patchwork. While sound foreign relations can indeed help, we need to hold on to our beliefs and ideals and retain to the greatest possible extent, the customs, ethos and conventions of our nation. We need to stop selling our heritage chipped into cheap pieces to meet that greedy need for the fast green buck. We need to make sure that ecotourism does not mean land grabbing with green labels attached, by those who have little respect for the well being of host communities.

The future of tourism in Sri Lanka indeed is embedded in the spirit she generates through her natural beauty and bio-diversity, her glorious past, innocence of the majority of her people, the colourful cultures she emanates and her willingness to share all of it with the rest of mankind. This spirit needs a rejuvenation of sorts and that rejuvenation needs to be injected with a great deal of sensitivity and care. For otherwise, we may end up killing the very goose that lays the golden eggs.

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