Promoting Sri Lanka under new strategy
View(s):A new tourism promotion strategy would be enforced by the local authorities with the aim of improving on marketing destination Sri Lanka and selecting one company to implement this proposal. The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) will be involved in selecting a company to carry out all of its campaigns. In this respect, the SLTDA is currently involved in the process of shortlisting the companies that have submitted their proposals, Tourism Minister John Amaratunga said. He explained that they would be looking at creating separate campaigns for India and another for China and one campaign for all other markets.
The authorities are looking at a new strategy as they believe it is necessary to change how they target travellers to the country from time to time.
Commenting on the large sums of monies spent by the previous administration for promotions Minister Amaratunga said that they could not go ahead with the promotions, which have been accounted for as waste, by the former tourism pundits. “We have withheld a number of payments that have been put forward for those frivolous campaigns since there is no meaning to the expenditure that had been incurred,” the minister said. He pointed out that such expenses had not brought in any results and noted that the results made last year is an indication of what the new administration had enforced. However, it remained unclear as to how the last year targets were missed by the present administration which is currently working on achieving a 2.5 million tourist arrivals by the end of this year.
In addition, the government has already drafted the new classification of hotels from one to five star category ratings. At present the SLTDA has sent the document to be gazetted which would review the hotel ratings and ensure that standards were maintained.
The classification is carried out with the aim of updating the hotel ratings in line with international requirements. The minister pointed out that the surge in demand for lands for hotels was on the increase and as a result it was necessary to bring about regulation within these establishments as a result of which the new classification would be produced.- (SD)