More German tourists to visit Sri Lanka

Shirajiv Sirimane in Berlin

The Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators signed an MoU to promote the country. Here CEO, SriLankan, Kapila Chandrasena with SLITO, President Mahen Kariyawasam

A Sri Lankan craftman from Ambalangoda displaying his talents

MP Sajin Vaas Gunawardane at the ITB's Sri Lanka pavilion with SriLankan Airlines Chairman Nishantha Wickremesinghe and other industry stakeholders

Berlin: Sri Lankan Tourism is one of the biggest beneficiaries of peace achieved after the world's largest humanitarian operation.

It was said that Tourism reached its peak in 1982 and it nosedived after the 1983 violence and it never recovered until permanent peace was restored. Today Sri Lanka, one of the most trouble free countries is reaping the peace time benefits.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa made a huge contribution to the tourism industry stressing that the country should achieve the target of 2.5 million tourist arrivals by 2016.

Critics have been proved wrong as Sri Lanka is slowly and surely heading towards not only achieving but also surpassing its target in two years.

Visitors

Sri Lanka is already experiencing new record visitor numbers in that a total of 1.27 million visitors came to the island in 2013 – an increase of an enormous 26.7 percent compared to the previous year. With 85,470 arrivals, the number of tourists from Germany has increased by almost 20 percent compared with 2012. That makes Germany the most important tourism market after India and the UK. The average duration of stay per visitor increased from 10 days in 2012 to 11 days in 2013.

An outlook of future development: The strategic development plan of Sri Lanka Tourism strives for 1.5 million visitors (130,000 from Germany) in 2014, 2.5 million in 2016 and 4 million in 2020. At the same time the tourism-related employment is supposed to increase and the economic benefits of tourism will be shared by a larger cross section of the society.

Tourism sector

The enormous growth of the tourism sector requires targeted investment in transport infrastructure; Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport was opened in 2013 in the south of the island and new expressways have shortened the distance to beach resorts of the west and the southwest. Several road construction projects are in progress. Just around the island's capital, Colombo, nearly 280 kilometres of new expressways are being built.

Chairman, Malu Malu and Aliya hotels, Chandra Wickramasinghe thanked the government for its initiative in building a superior road network including highways which further promotes the tourism industry.

“Tourists visiting Sri Lanka are usually engaged in a mechanical’ rotation of life and with the new road network a tourist can save at least three to four hours of their travel time.”

This entices them to spend more time in the hotel and the vicinity and also prompting them to make purchases which bring more foreign exchange revenue to the country.’ He said that due to the opening of the Southern airport a tourist could land in Mattala and visit Yala, enjoy the East Coast, Cultural triangle and the beaches and then fly off from Colombo. Chairman SriLankan Airlines Nishantha Wickramasinghe said that the airline is ready to use Mattala as a stopover destination for their European sector flights.

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[Lanka to be partner country for ITB]

Ambassador Sarath Kongahage said that Sri Lanka would make a strong bid to be the Partner Country of the 2016 ITB Berlin, the world’s largest travel and leisure exhibition.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa would be invited for the opening ceremony which would be attended by the German head of state Angela Merkel. The event would be covered by over 10,000 foreign media.

“This would be the biggest international event for Sri Lanka in the annals of its history, said Ambassador Kongahage.

“The whole city of Berlin would be branded with Sri Lankan publicity material which would help more European arrivals to the country”.

The agreement in this regard was also signed and now it would be in the bidding stage with four other countries.