Tourism numbers dazzle in final countdown
Tourism authorities,in the final count, figured out that last year more tourists had popped onto the island than they had previously thought except in November when holidaymakers got scooped out in the numbers game!
Amidst speculation of manipulating tourist arrival figures, authorities on Friday admitted to further discrepancies in data not just in the 2013 data but also in the 2012 figures that seem to have gone unnoticed. In this regard, a meeting was held with the tourism industry on Thursday evening to clarify matters.
Sri Lanka Tourism stated that before releasing the 2012 data it was validated with the Immigration Department figures using the new system and techniques used by them. During this process the figures had indicated a variation which the authorities said was not a “huge variation after the validation.”
Similar validation carried out last year indicated an overall variation of 8.5 per cent between the manual and computerised methods adopted in the collection of data.
However, authorities state “after comparing validated data and previous data this cannot be considered as a huge discrepancy.”
An official said that this new system was adopted since there was a lack of checks and balances in the previous systems.
The age old system of rushing the embarkation cards in bags for counting at the Immigration office in Colombo was abandoned in favour of scanning these same cards at the airport itself that allows for more accurate data processing, an immigration department official said.
During the meeting with industry leaders, Sri Lanka Tourism authorities had explained in detail what the discrepancy was about referring to the difference found in the manual count and the computerised count admitting to have made a mistake, Tourist Hoteliers Association President Jayantissa Kehelpannala told the Business Times.
He dismissed allegations of possible manipulation of data on tourist arrivals in a bid to cross the targeted figure of 1.25 million as mere “speculation.”
Interestingly, the authorities were just last December contemplating on whether they would be capable of achieving the target of 1.5 million set for this year even as most in the industry predicted a marginal performance to achieving the 1.25 million arrivals for 2013.
It was then that figures began changing on the number of arrivals since the authorities went for a major advertising campaign in the media on achieving the target for 2013 highlighting arrivals at 1.27 million.
This caused frenzy as the industry was baffled by the emerging numbers since the December figure appeared unrealistic based on the statistics released throughout the year.
Authorities were however, confident that investments would remain unaffected since “the validated data is more effective, transparent and reliable and the increased figures will give confidence for attracting more investments to the country.”