Sri Lanka Tourism undeterred, stays on course for the coming winter season

Sri Lanka Tourism in the wake of the success of the ‘World Spice Food Festival 2007’ - Hawker Street Festival in particular, is preparing for the forthcoming winter season's programmes, undeterred by the attack on the SL Air Force base, at Anuradhapura.

On learning of the attack on the Air Force Base at Anuradhapura Sri Lanka Tourism was quick to send out a media release to all over the world, specially to European countries, dispelling any fears giving the true picture to the local media and to associates in the industry through an e news letter disseminated to over 8,000 addressees in their network.

Dileep Mudadeniya Managing Director Sri Lanka Tourism Promotions Bureau speaking of the incident ' We cannot get disheartened by this kind of small set back, many countries in this region have problems of this nature but the tourism industry remains focussed on attracting visitors'. He went on to add 'Our own programmes to draw visitors to Sri Lanka will go on as planned. The French have shown a particular interest to visit Sri Lanka and the world's biggest multi sport adventure competition for women 'RAID Amazon' is going to be held in Dambulla in January next year, also the Galle Literary Festival, our calendar for visitors covers a wide area of interests and the tourist are positive about travel to Sri Lanka'.

The most recent success story of Sri Lanka Tourism's initiatives came from the ' World Spice Food Festival 2007' and its Hawker Street food promotion which ran last week. Upali de Silva, Director Corporate Affairs of Sri Lanka Tourism airing his views on the event 'Our hard work was well rewarded. On the 19th around 1300 persons visited the Hawker Street Food Fair at Nomads Grounds and on the second day on Saturday in spite of the rain and the grounds being wet there were more than 2000 people excluding children and all the food sold out well before time'.

An idea of Sri Lanka Tourism to bring in signature chefs to the food fair was supported by SriLankan Airlines and the event sponsored by HSBC Colombo. This much publicised and popular programme continues through this week with the hotels serving their chosen specialities made by visiting signature chefs. The range is - Hilton Colombo: Mexican; Hotel Galadari: Chinese; Cinnamon Grand: Lebanese; Trans Asia Hotel: Singaporean; Ceylon Continental: Indonesian; Taj Samudra Hotel: Italian; Holiday Inn Hotel: Indian(South);Galle Face Hotel: Australian; Mt. Lavinia Hotel: Thai; Water's Edge: Malaysian; Mango Tree: Indian; Raja Bojun: Sri Lankan; Siam House: Thai; Sakura: Japanese; Han Gook Gwan: Korean; Hilton Residence: Mediterranean.