Sri Lanka will sponsor a major international travel fair for the first time in history to boost the industry.
“We will sponsor the World Travel Mart which will be held in London next month. This is the first time that the country is sponsoring such a mega international event. The country will offer 275,000 Pounds as the sponsorship value,” Chairman Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau Kishu Gomes said.
The industry is looking forward to aggressive promotion of the country as a preferred destination and will engage in a promotional mix to woo more tourists. The sponsoring of the WTM is expected to provide impetus for the industry growth in terms of increasing arrivals and generation of revenue, he said.
“We are still optimistic of reaching the set target of 1.9 million tourist arrivals for the year. To this end we have launch various promotional activities. Together with the industry stakeholders these marketing promotional activities are taking place. We also will be looking at entering new markets such as Scandinavia, Australia, Switzerland, Austria, Benelux, Poland, Czech Republic of Hungary and Spain,” he said.
Emphasizing that the private sector support is critical to derive better results in a bid to speedily revive the tourism industry, he said that the state always consider industry requirements on priority basis. The tourism trend for the past four years indicates that there is a clear upward movement in arrivals. From 2016 to 2019 arrivals recorded figures of 1,798,380, 2, 050,832, 2,116,407 and 2,333,796. The growth rates were 17.8 14 3.2 and 10.3 respectively. The revenue generated for this period was US $ billion 3, 3.5, 3.9 and 4.4.
Among the top ten countries of tourist arrivals for 2018 were India, China, UK, Germany, Australia and France. Sri Lanka has participated in 55 travel fairs in 2018 while in 45 travel fairs in 2019 up to September. It has organised 41 road shows in 2018 and 18 so far for this year.