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Sunday, 11 March 2012

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German tourist arrivals to hit new high

Tourists from Germany will be the largest European tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka soon. Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Lakshman Yapa Abeywardane who spoke to the Sunday Observer after the opening ceremony of the ITB Berlin exhibition said that there were 55,000 German arrivals last year and with the assistance of SriLankan airlines, they could improve on this figure.

He said that the hotel sector was facing a construction boom and 22,000 star class rooms would be built in the next four years.

“Most importantly over 30, 000 of these rooms would be built in the North and the East creating nearly 50, 000 new employment opportunities,“he said.

He said that in addition to the rooms several other tourisma-related projects such as golf courses, theme parks, shopping malls, Yacht Marinas,taxi services and domestic airlines too would be added from the leisure sector to the countries infrastructure.

The Minister said that Germans in addition to being long stayers are also high spenders.. ‘‘Another advantage of the German market is that they are repeats which helps to maintain growth in this market,‘‘ he added.

Meanwhile, Chairman SriLankan Airlines, Nishantha Wickramasinghe said that they would be making the weekly five frequency to a daily and this would also help to increase arrivals. He said that Srilankan is the only airline that operates direct flights between Colombo and Germany.

The Chairman also disclosed plans to once again add Berlin to their radar.

This year over 50 Sri Lankan companies participated at the worlds largest travel show ITB which saw a total of 11, 163 exhibitors and a record 200, 000 visitors attending the event. It was estimated that exhibitor sales from the event was over six billion Euro.

Pic: Shirajiv Sirimane

 

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