Indian tour operator’s convention to lure more MICE
The arrival of Indian tour operators for their convention next month in Colombo was important to Sri Lanka as it would mean more MICE events being attracted to the country, according to Tourism Minister John Amaratunga
This is the first time that Sri Lanka Tourism has been able to attract the Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) Outbound Convention scheduled to be held on October 2-4.
The IATO is India’s national apex body of tour operators with a membership of over 1600 across the country.
This membership comprises all of India’s inbound tour operators, travel agents, hotel chains, airlines, media and other stakeholders in the tourism and hospitality industries.
The convention is being handled by the Sri Lanka Convention Bureau (SLCB) and is expected to host around 400 participants at the event.
At a media briefing on Friday, the Minister pointed out that with India being Sri Lanka’s biggest source market, there was a need to ensure this could be increased to a total of 400,000 which would mean around a 5 per cent rise from last year.
However, the minister pointed out that a systematic promotional campaign was not carried out to attract MICE events from India.
He said increased numbers of travel promotions were carried out India but a planned strategy needs to be worked out under the digital marketing campaign and the global promotion campaign.