The Tourism Ministry will implement a promotion campaign to reach a target of 250,000 tourist arrivals per month. “Our global promotion program will be implemented in March or April next year but we have launched a special short-term program aiming to attract at least 250,000 tourists to Sri Lanka every month,” Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunga told the Sunday Observer yesterday.
Minister Ranatunga said the target is to attract more tourists from countries such as Germany, France, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the US, UK, Canada and India. He said the Ministry also hopes to attractmore tourists from China.
“Travel agents of these countries request us to promote Sri Lanka as a tourist destination rather than carrying out separate promotional campaigns for tourism and tea. Therefore, we hope to make arrangements in this regard through discussions with Ambassadors in those countries,” he said. The Minister said it has also been decided to give wide publicity in these promotions to Sri Lanka as a country that has successfully carried out Covid-19 vaccinations, targeting tourists in major countries. The goal of the Tourism Development Authority should be to attract more tourists to the country within the next two months, he said, adding that all activities of the institution should be implemented based on that. It is also essential to implement a fresh program for this through creative ideas, he said. He said, “Our target is to bring 250,000 tourists to Sri Lanka per month from next month. If we can reach at least half of this target, that would be a big achievement for us. We have not drawn up a special program for next year as yet. However, our aim is to somehow reach the target of 250,000 tourists per month.”
The Minister said at present, the number of tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka is gradually increasing. Earlier, only 100 to 200 tourists arrived at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) a day. At present, nearly 6,000 to 7,000 tourists use the BIA daily. “When tourist arrivals gradually increase, it would be a boon to our economy.”