Sri Lanka prepares for more tourist dollars
View(s):The tourism industry is set to bounce back as Sri Lankan hotels are moving out of their pandemic-related operations and resuming their hospitable welcome to the travellers which is set to roll in much needed foreign exchange to the cash-strapped nation.
Sri Lanka relaxed travel restrictions on September 28, opening its doors to travellers fully vaccinated to walk right through with no more PCR tests and with the UK removing the country from its red list category, more bookings are coming in.
“We believe tourism can be revived as bookings are going up and airlines are increasing flights but the big markets like China, Australia and some Far East countries still remain closed for travel,” Sri Lanka Tourist Hotels Association President Sanath Ukwatte told the Business Times. He noted that though they cannot expect full occupancy around 60-75 per cent is likely in the first three months of next year with bookings set to increase in the resort and round-trip hotels. This is a good start, Mr. Ukwatte noted adding that they needed to refurbish their hotels having converted them to intermediate care centres for hospitals.
About 5000 beds in 50 hotels were used for these operations countrywide, the THASL President noted adding that once each hotel ends their contracts (with hospitals) they will reconvert to cater to the tourist traffic.
Mr. Ukwatte said that some hotel centres had already pulled out of these operations and were involved in repositioning their hotels.
Group travels are not happening on a large scale as previously with most people preferring to travel on their own except for a few countries like Russia, it was noted.
Meanwhile, the industry is facing another issue as workers are now hard to find since most staff has migrated to other countries once the industry went down in Sri Lanka resulting in numbers now hard to find and hotels are now compelled to retrain staff and start anew. Most hotels laid-off contract and temporary staff when the tourist numbers fell last year.
Mr. Ukwatte said they are currently targeting US$500 million in tourist earnings for this financial year ending March 2022.
Wellness tourism based 20- roomed hotel Santani has however, found a space for the wellness market and had enjoyed a 20 per cent occupancy in March and April when the country opened up again, its founder Vickum Nawagamuwage said.
He explained that trying to achieve high numbers however is not a possibility under today’s context as the country is still fighting the pandemic.
“We need to manage our risk of COVID-19 to incentivise travellers who are vaccinated to travel to Sri Lanka,” he said.
This exclusive resort also has seen a significant pick up but this will not fulfill the expectations of the government to overcome the dollar crisis as most believe that tourism is going to solve all problems but that is not the case, he explained.
Mr. Nawagamuwage noted that if Sri Lanka is expecting a high volume of revenue then they should be seeing thousands of tourists arriving. So far however, most travellers seen are those visiting from Canada especially Sri Lankans with foreign passports, he said.
His concerns are that though the country has opened up travellers are unaware of this and the only news they know of Sri Lanka is that which was stated about two months back.
In this respect, a campaign to promote that “Sri Lanka is safe” is needed to send the right message across to travel agents and thereby change public opinion that will then bring back the numbers, he explained.
Jetwing Chairman Hiran Cooray who has paused some of their hotels’ expansion drive is now confident the industry will restart, “We believe we will have a good winter. Everyday things have been getting better and everything is falling into place.”
Just ahead of the season the hotel chain is set to recommence their training programme from this month and will rehire depending on the requirements.
The industry hopes they can at least make earnings this winter comparable to the numbers achieved in 2019, one of the lowest years as tourism made a comeback even then after the Easter attacks.