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| Sunday, 23 October 2005 |
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Community tourism the now trend by Surekha Galagoda Community Tourism and Home stays is the latest trend in tourism. The all inclusive concept is now changing. Today foreigners prefer to visit a country to taste the difference while contributing to the community of the country they are visiting. Community Tourism is a concept where foreigners live with locals to experience their traditions,culture, customs and food. They also help in some community work during their stay for about two-three weeks. Home stays are required by travellers who visit a country to gain first-hand experience of the local lifestyle, culture, ethics and norms. Therefore they stay with the locals. At present Hilfswerk Austria is carrying out a Community Tourism project together with Sarvodaya. A volunteer from UK Ms Catherine Leech is coordinating the program from Sarvodaya. Under the program we have selected four houses each in five villages in Anuradhapura who have volunteered to keep tourists under the Community Tourism project. The villages selected for the project are Chagnikulam, Divulwewa, Mankadawala, Katukeliyawa and Aluthwewa. Project Manager Tourism Hilfswerk Sandamala Wickremaratne and Catherine Leech visited these villages and trained these volunteers in each village at a meeting and also visited each house to give suggestions on what furniture,fixture,fittings and linen are expected in the room, cleanliness standards of the mattress, pillows and linen in the bedroom, cleaning of the toilets and how proper cleaning should be done, safety of the surroundings, and food that could be offered and how it should be presented. Ms Wickremaratne said that all volunteers were very keen to have visitors and as hospitality is nothing new it should work out well. She said that language won't be a barrier as people can relate to each other and also as time goes by everybody will learn each other's languages. New promotion on Qatar Airways flights to Europe by Don Asoka Wijewardena Qatar Airways is offering a new promotion on all flights to Europe commencing today. The promotion offers tickets on a "buy one get one free" basis,said Qatar Airways Area Manager - Sri Lanka R.Bharathan at a press conference on Qatar Airways Exclusive Offer at the Hotel Galadari on Tuesday. Bharathan said that the new exclusive offer would give passengers flying business or first class to Europe the opportunity to bring their guest along at no additional costs, giving travellers the opportunity to experience Qatar Airways award winning five star services. As part of its strategy to offer passengers the opportunity to experience its five star hospitality, the Gulf-based carrier had offered travellers the most competitive fares in the market. Qatar Airways District Sales Manager-Colombo Jagath de Silva said that Qatar Airways would fly to Nairobi on November 15,Madrid on December 2 and Berlin on December 15. He also said that the Airline had been operating a fleet of 42 Airbus aircraft and would almost triple in size to 100 aircraft by 2015. He said that the Airline had planned to acquire Boeing 777s at 15.2 billion US dollars. Qatar Airways is one of the few selected airlines in the world ranked Five Star by Skytrax,the independent aviation industry monitoring agency. Skytrax also named Qatar Airways cabin crew as the best in the Middle
East for the third year running and fifth best in the world following a
survey of more than 12 million passengers across the globe. |
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