Hoteliers call for Government assistance to develop leisure industry

HIRAN H. Senewiratne reporting from London

London, Thursday - President of the Tourist Hotels Association of Sri Lanka (THASL) Hiran Cooray told the Daily News that the Government 's assistance is needed to develop hotel infrastructure, and tourist related services to face challenges in the industry.

He said that WTM is only a meeting and interactive place for industry stakeholders and all major important dealings happen outside the event or after the event.

"This being the first WTM after the tsunami, we have received a tremendous response from the people who visit the Sri Lanka Tourist Board (SLTB) stand," he said.

Cooray mentioned that certain tsunami affected areas have not been cleared so far especially the Peraliya area.

"This created a negative impact for the industry," he said. Cooray said that still the tourists are under the impression that Sri Lanka is affected by the tsunami and we need to change that mindset of them by promoting that it got affected only in 5 per cent of the total land area of the country.

He said that there were significant responses from new tour operators and travel agents which is a healthy situation for Sri Lanka's tourist industry. The SLTB is now in the process of aggressively exploiting opportunities, he said.

A tourism development master plan was drafted in 2002 but with the tsunami disaster, its implementation part got slowed down and now the confidence level is picking up. By participating in this type of event, we need to build our lost image and the SLTB has to play a major role for this purpose, he said.

Cooray who is also the Managing Director of Jetwing Hotels Ltd said that two new hotel projects are under construction, one is Vil Uyana at Sigiriya other one is Manall Kadul at Nilaveli, which will be ready by May next year. The investment for those two projects are around Rs. 500 million.

Meanwhile, India's Taj Hotels is planning significant expansion-geographically and structurally. Most visible has been its takeover of the iconic Pierre hotel in New York earlier this year, which had been part of the Four Seasons hotel group for 25 years. The hotel's name will be unchanged.

The task in New York is great- to increase the achieved room rate by US$250. (We estimate current achieved rates are US$300-350) A US$ 35 million renovation is planned- the equivalent of about US$ 125,000/ UNITS FOR THE Pierre's 200 rooms and 80 residences.

In India the group plans to build environmentally sustainable lodges in some of he country (400-PLUS) national parks, eight lodges are planned with three due to open before the end of this year.

Separately, the group expected to have 10 of its IndiOne budget hotels open by the end of this year and it hopes to open another 15 in 2006.

Taj launched the IndiOne concept in Bangalore just over one year ago. Described as a no frills room including bathroom and air conditioning, it does nevertheless have wi-fi, fridge, TV etc. Nightly rates are generally around US$23 (1000).

Taj has raised finance for international expansion-US MILLION, which calculates to about 1500 rooms at a cost of US$100,000 room.As a result it is looking to develop hotels over a wide geographical areas- Australia some Asian countries, China, Arabia, Gulf, Southern Africa and the US (such as Los Angeles or San Francisco to support its new acquisition on the east coast). Most of these hotels would probably operate under its Taj brand name.

However, partly because of all this actual and planned expansion the company has constructed the Lando marketing company to make a study on the group's brandnames which are currently a mix that could be confusing for the traveller.

Lando is due to deliver its findings before the end of this year. But some published reports already indicated that Taj has plans to create a 4 star brand keeping Taj for its top market hotels.