New tourism market in emerging economies

Sri Lanka is taking the initiative to reduce its dependency on Western markets and exploit opportunities in emerging economies and the government last week recorded its new initiative in attracting more Chinese tourists to the country. The Cabinet last week approved a proposal by Minister of Economic Development, Basil Rajapaksa to invite 100 Chinese travel agents on a familiarisation tour of the country. This initiative has been proposed to attract 60,000 Chinese tourists this year to meet the government's target of 1.25 million tourists for 2013.

In 2012 over 25,000 Chinese tourists visited to Sri Lanka, a 58.1% growth compared to the previous year.

Cabinet spokesmen Minister Rambukwelle said that China has become a key outbound travel market in recent years with the country becoming a top source of visitors for many East Asian nations. The Chinese market will be developed as part of efforts to reduce the dependency on European visitors with India and China becoming large economic powers.

India does not need special promotion because of our cultural relationship and close proximity, he said.

Economic analysts said diversification of export markets, including the tourism sector is essential because the world economic order has completely changed over the past decade.Over dependency on US and EU markets always poses risks. Today over 60 percent of Sri Lankan exports goes to these two markets and as a result, ups and downs of these economies have an impact on export revenue of Sri Lanka. This situation has arisen after the economic crisis in the US and Europe commenced in 2008.On the other hand this over dependency on a few markets have enabled these countries to put political pressure on Sri Lanka.