Netherlands relaxes travel advisory
by Chanuka Mannapperuma
The Netherlands, has relaxed its travel advisory to enable Dutch tour
operators to aggressively market Sri Lanka, said Tourist Board Chairman
Renton de Alwis.
"The advisory now states that Dutch travellers must be cautious when
travelling and they must use formal means of transport and tour
operations", he said. The chairman said in 2006,there were 19,360
tourists from the Netherlands. Between January and July in 2006, the
Dutch arrivals stood at 12,593 and for the same period in 2007, it was
10,083, registering a drop of 19.9 percent.
"We expect the arrivals from the Netherlands now progressively to get
back to normalcy with softening of the Travel advisory. We are also
planning to carry out strong promotions in the Dutch market in the
future to regain and develop strong market share", he said.
Speaking about future tourism promotions, he said, Tourism Minister
Milinda Moragoda will leave for France and the Netherlands today to have
discussions to recapture another important market segment.
According to Alwis, with the softening of the French Travel Advisory,
the Sri Lanka French tour operators are preparing to promote Sri Lanka
for the fall and Winter seasons and the French tour operators announced
at their Annual General Meeting last Friday that destination Sri Lanka
is open.
Alwis said, France is an important market for Sri Lanka, from where
around 30,000 tourists visit Sri Lanka annually making them the fourth
largest in bound tourism market.
French travellers generally spend an average of 11 nights in Sri
Lanka and with the drop in arrivals due to adverse travel advisories,
the industry incurred a loss of over 10 million Euros, he said.
He said, with the softening of the travel advisories the Sri Lanka
Embassy will do the ground work in preparation for the re-launch of
destination Sri Lanka on September 11 at the UNESCO auditorium in Paris
creating a 'buzz' about Sri Lanka a couple of days prior to the French
Travel Fair in Deuville scheduled for end September.
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