Hard to find a room on Lankan isle this winter
Sri Lanka’s tourism industry is bracing for its busiest winter this season in the recent past since numbers have not been doing too well earlier.
The industry believes this will be its busiest winter due to the change in the political environment most likely, Tourist Hoteliers Association President Hiran Cooray said in an interview with the Business Times.
Sorting out and neutralising Sri Lanka’s international relations has put the country back on track to becoming increasingly attractive, it was noted.
Mr. Cooray explained that looking at the bookings over the next couple of months it showed that some of the hotels were unable to sell their rooms due to excessive demand this year.
However, the leisure market that has a fair amount of visitors from India and China would be found staying mostly in the informal establishments. So, this year as well the trend of travellers to pick the informal segment to stay in would continue.
The French and German markets were said to be performing well again and in this respect looked positive.
City Hoteliers Association President M. Shanthikumar also said 70 per cent occupancies were expected for winter.
But it was noted that a few road shows have been put on hold due to the inability to get tourism promotions underway since new appointments to state agencies were yet to be made. However proper brand destination positioning was required as the industry awaits the tourism promotion campaign to get underway for which some part, the creative content, has been stalled.
This continuous lagging of promotions and the fact that Sri Lanka is not being promoted adequately internationally has left it crying out loud for more. In the midst of this, the board and heads of tourism institutes had stepped down to make way for a new team to be appointed shortly.
However, when this team would be appointed is left to be seen as Tourism Minister John Amaratunga had assured it would happen the same week the officials resigned but now it is two weeks since then.
The minister on the other hand is unwell and the head of Sri Lanka’s delegation to the World Travel Mart (WTM) in London will be Deputy Minister Arundhika Fernando.