Despite sharp rise in tourist arrivals:

Drop in hotel occupancy

Despite a sharp rise in the number of tourist arrivals, the hotel occupancy rate this month has dropped drastically, according to officials of the Tourist Hotels Association of Sri Lanka.

A senior official of the Association said that many hotels across the country reported a very low occupancy rate this month. “The reason for the decline is yet to be identified”, he said.

He said hotels did well during the first few months of this year recording over 75 percent room occupancy. Hotel occupancy recorded a month-on-month increase this year compared to a sluggish pace last year.

“Hotel occupancy in many hotels is around 60 percent today which a substantial drop compared to the corresponding month last year”, he said.

A committee member of the Tourist Hotels Association-Amal Goonetilleke said that the reason for the decline in room occupancy in hotels is the lack of strategic marketing of the destination.

“We need to market out destination if we are to attract visitors to the country. Sri Lanka has diverse attractions which should be marketed”, she said.

Many hotels have been given a facelift while some are yet under refurbishment to offer a better service and lure more visitors to the hotel.

Sri Lanka Tourism hopes to increase the number of hotel rooms to around 35,000 from the current 14,000 to meet the target of 2.5 tourist arrivals by 2015.

The number of tourist arrivals rose 66.7 percent to 63,835 last month from a year ago with a sharp increase in visitors from South Asia and Western Europe. The number of tourist arrivals was up 40.4 percent to 278,959 during the four months to April, according to a spokesman for the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB).

The number of tourists from Western Europe, a vital source of revenue to the resorts rose 70 percent to 23,226 last month.

According to the SLTPB, visitors from South Asia have increased conspicuously over the years and the region is fast becoming a leading market for the industry. Tourists from India contributes a major share of the country’s MICE sector tourism which is growing at a solid pace due to the increase in the number of international conferences, exhibitions and meetings. “We are confident that tourist arrivals would surpass 700,000 this year and gradually approach the target envisaged for 2015”, an official of the SLTPB said.

LF