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| Sunday, 29 February 2004 |
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Business |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Indian Tourists - high spenders The overall average expenditure of Indian tourists was estimated at Rs 40,716 whereas the average daily expenditure per tourist was Rs 5,655, revealed a survey done by Research and International Affairs Division, Sri Lanka Tourist Board. The highest spenders in terms of average per head expenditure were tourists from Delhi with Rs 55,920. However, in terms of average daily expenditure the tourists from Karnataka ranked as the highest spenders with Rs 8,749 per night. On an average, 52 percent of tourist expenditure was incurred at hotels and other places of stay for board and lodging and other services. The next largest item was restaurants, bars and other food and beverage outlets amounting to 19 percent of the total. Shopping accounted for 14 percent of total tourist expenditure. The survey revealed that most of the visitors were concerned about the inadequacy of Indian and Vegetarian food available in local hotels and restaurants, increase in the level of service as well as relaxing the present foreign exchange restrictions and price anomalies in the taxi service. In addition, a fair number of tourists have stated that there is a lack of proper signboards in English at places of tourist attraction while the local transport system as well as the tourist information service needs improvement. According to the survey the most popular places of attraction for Indian Tourists are Colombo City, Kandy, Southern beach coast, hill country including NuwaraEliya, Bandarawela and Ella and the Elephant orphanage at Pinnawela. The most popular activities according to importance are shopping, sight seeing tours, tasting of indian food at Indian restaurants and sea bathing. The tourists were asked to express their opinion regarding the overall holiday experience in the country. More than 90 percent indicated that they had an enjoyable stay while 49 percent rated the stay as an outstanding experience. None responded that their stay was disappointing. more than 90 percent of the tourists who visited the country said that they were not ill treated, cheated or harassed and nine out of ten tourists wanted to come back. The survey was conducted during the period April to July 2003. The main objective of the survey was to obtain information on visitor profile travel behaviour patterns, opinions and impressions of tourists on the levels of satisfaction they had while on holiday in Sri Lanka. A total of 1000 tourists were interviewed directly for the survey. |
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