Tourist cancellation tsunami in Sri Lanka

ForwardKeys, an international agency that analyses global future travel patterns, has said thatt Sri Lanka has faced a tsunami of cancellations in the aftermath of the attacks on Easter Sunday.

The agency stated that within three days the number of cancellations of existing bookings surged to 86.2 per cent while new bookings fell away.

Forward bookings for July and August, which had been running 2.6 per cent ahead of last year fell to 0.3 per cent behind as of April 23.
Jameson Wong, Director, Business Development, APAC, ForwardKeys, said: “What Sri Lanka has suffered is just horrendous and our hearts go out to all the victims, their families and the people of Sri Lanka.” He continued: “At the moment, it is really too early to predict what the effect on tourism to Sri Lanka will be, as the initial wave of cancellations affects trips planned in the very near term. If we look back at past terrorist atrocities, it is interesting to note how different the impacts can be. In the wake of the bloody siege at the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi, bookings suffered a similar collapse in the immediate aftermath; however, within less than two weeks, international arrivals returned to growth. By comparison, it has taken more than three years to see a Tunisian tourism recovery following the massacre on the beach in Sousse in 2015. We will keep the situation under review.” (Sunimalee)