A New Promotion Strategy for 2011, Visit Sri Lanka Year, with A Theme Assigned for Each Month

12th December 2010, www.thebottomline.lk, By Azhar Razak

Sri Lanka is to adopt a different tourism promotion strategy next year by focussing on key sectors during each month.

The move is in line with the year being declared as ‘Visit Sri Lanka Year’.

According to a top official, the new proposal should help the industry to attract more tourists to the island as it aims to concentrate on specific aspects of tourism each calendar month.

“We have adopted a theme for each month in 2011, Sri Lanka Tourism (SLT) chairman Dr Nalaka Godahewa told The Bottom Line.

January - Beaches
February - Sports and Activities
March – MICE
April – People and Culture
May – Religion Tourism
June – Weddings and Honeymoons
July – Health
August – Heritage
September – Wildlife
October – Community (Agriculture and Fishing)
November – Culinary
December – Shopping and Entertainment

To keep these themes alive, he said SLT had planned to concentrate on various events that will happen right throughout the year.

According to industry officials, in January, SLT will promote beaches at the season’s peak, in February - the ICC World Cup 2011, in March - organising of UNWTO regional commission meeting in Sri Lanka, in July - an Ayurvedic exhibition to be held, in August - the Esela Perahera and related events, in September, the Minneriya elephant gathering, in October, SLT will encourage the nine provinces to come up with a minimum of nine tourism villages focussing on their strengths, in November - the World Spice Festival is set to take place, and in December a large scale shopping festival will take place.

Dr Godahewa said Sri Lanka is fast emerging as a tourism hotspot as travel advisories are now favourable and more airlines have scheduled flights into Colombo.
“We have also sorted out the administrative issues specifically with regard to delays that used to happen in project approvals in relation to the industry by setting up a ‘one stop shop’ service which now fast tracks most applications,” he said.

When asked what the tourist arrivals target would be for the year 2011, Godahewa said the board had not yet set a specific target for the year alone but were working on the longer term target of attracting 2.5 million visitors by the year 2016.

Sri Lanka’s total arrivals from January 2010 to October this year has shot up by 43.5 percent to 497,598 from a year earlier with tourist arrivals in October 2010 increasing by 39.4 percent to 52,370 visitors from a year ago.

Earnings from tourism have also jumped by 62 percent in the first 10 months of this year to a record $437.9 million, the Central Bank’s latest data showed.