Tourism hurt by just 1.9 m visitors
View(s):The tourism industry is unhappy about the 1.9 million arrivals achieved last year and as Sri Lanka City Hotels Association President M. Shanthikumar said they are “not at all satisfied with this number.” It is a figure that is down by 400,000 compared to the previous year.
“Soon after the April blast if the promotions commenced on time we could have achieved at least the previous year’s numbers of 2.2 million,” he said.
“Not just the SMEs (small and medium enterprises) but even the star class hotels are not making money because the room inventory is higher than the demand,” he noted.
During a meeting with Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunga this week, the industry has delved on the issues of marketing, destination promotion, developing the city of Colombo to increase occupancy by way of promoting MICE business for which a proper convention centre is require.
The industry had called for the construction of a convention centre to accommodate about 6000 people. In addition calls were also made to revive the licences issued to establish a casino that was banned during the previous government.
The industry also requires additional entertainment venues to attract travellers to the city, it was pointed out.
The visa extension for the 41 countries by a further year to increase arrivals was also made to the minister who agreed to submit the proposal to cabinet for approval.
The Colombo city is expected to increase is room inventory to 7000 by 2021/22 which would result in an addition of 4000 rooms.
In order to fill this capacity, the industry explained that Sri Lanka needs to attract more MICE traffic to the country, who are travellers that frequent the city.
In the wake of the low tourist arrivals, the industry has also requested for an extension of the moratorium granted on their loans by another year since occupancies were low at present and earnings insufficient to repay loans.
(SD)