Financial Times

Mega PR campaign to woo tourists
The "Singapore Girl" experts help Sri Lanka be the “best girl on the beach”
Batey, which won plaudits for its attention-grabbing "Singapore Girl" adverts for Singapore Airlines many years ago, says a new $5.7 million worth PR campaign to boost Sri Lankan tourism would focus on the quality traveler from overseas.

"We are looking at around 600,000 tourists by 2006 and then leveling out. Hopefully by that time we would see the shift to quality tourists with longer stays (and more spend). We want this to be a quality destination, not another Miami (in the US)," noted Ian Batey, group chairman of Singapore-based Batey Group.

Earlier this year Batey was asked to handle a PR campaign for the Sri Lanka Tourist Board to boost the country's tourism industry under a $1.9 million annual budget. The campaign, the chairman says, is more a brand management exercise than just public relations. "Don't think of us as just running around with a press release. There is a bigger picture in this assignment," he told The Sunday Times FT in an interview in Colombo.

Batey, who founded the agency in 1972, said their first quarter performance to June this year has shown good results with the agency being able to get a quarter million worth of dollars in editorial coverage for Sri Lanka. "We put a value on what we achieve and editorial coverage (of Sri Lanka) in this context has been successful," he said adding that there are industry standards to quantify editorial values.

He said the agency, in which PR is just one of a range of brand building activities, offered its services to the government and when accepted, came up with this PR campaign.

Batey estimates that when the quality traveler concept grows, Sri Lanka by the year 2010 would be attracting tourists of around 650,000 - 700,000 with the main focus being on the yield per traveller ... not the numbers.

The agency's three-year contract effectively began only in April - though scheduled to start earlier - due to many reasons including political uncertainty and the elections.

He said the agency would work alongside the activities that the Sri Lanka Tourism Board undertakes in branding and promotion work. "We will complement SLT work in the marketplace," he said adding that Batey will focus on brand enhancement, providing ideas and upgrade offerings.

Batey says tourism receipts are targeted to reach $1 billion by 2010. He sees the current project as a fast forward campaign aimed at essentially getting editorial coverage in the media around the world in key markets.

The Batey office in Colombo is headed by Gerry Delikhan, a Sri Lankan journalist who worked at Lake House in the mid 1950s and now lives abroad.

Special event!
"A lovely story indeed. It's older than the Raffles (in Singapore)," exclaimed Ian Batey, saying the forthcoming 200th year anniversary of the Mount Lavinia hotel to be commemorated in 2006, is a good event as a tourism industry promotion.

This however could be misleading, since the building will be 200 years old and not the hotel itself which began years later on the same premises.

Historical records and many tourism articles on the Internet say that while the history of the building dates back to 1805 when 46-year-old Sir Thomas Maitland who was the Governor of the then Ceylon built his residence at the present venue, the premises was used as a hotel, only several years later.

Sir Thomas left Ceylon in 1811 and after that the Governor's mansion became a holiday home for foreign visitors, a wartime hospital and eventually one of the island's first and finest hotels. The hotel thus won't be 200 years old in 2006.

Back to Business