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Aitken Spence and Co. Ltd is looking at Cochin as a location for their next overseas resort hotel, the company's Chairman, Prema Cooray said.

"The resort hotels in Cochin are performing extremely well and a hotel in Cochin will boost our efforts in promoting the 'multi destination tourism concept' in the future," he said in an interview.

Aitken Spence operates three resort hotels in the Maldives. The Maldivian resorts have made rich contributions to the growth of the company's hotel sector.

"We've been considering a joint venture resort and have had some initial discussions with a couple of Indian business partners. But, nothing has been finalised as yet. We feel that air transportation and the standard and facilities of the Cochin International Airport should be further developed to gain favourable results from the proposed hotel project," Mr. Cooray told the Daily News.

Cochin is famous for backwater tourism and most of the hotels there, are built in front of waterways. Considering the attractions in Cochin, there is much potential to develop intra-regional or multi destination tourism among Sri Lanka, the Maldives and India, he said.

"If we have the right network of hotels and airline services we can further expand it to Nepal or Pakistan and promote South Asian tourism in a concerted effort."

Already, Aitken Spence has successfully developed the multi destination concept between Sri Lanka and the Maldives, with the assistance of the company's network of hotels and overseas tour agents. "We have grown dramatically with our Maldivian partners and that's how we have made tourism a mainline of business within the company."

Citing an example, Mr. Cooray saud that South East Asian countries have contributed significantly to the growth in tourism in their region. Likewise, South Asian countries too can develop such a concept, which would in return pay rich dividends by way way of large number of tourist arrivals, leading to economic growth in the region, he said. (CJ)

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