Lanka wins tourism poster award

BY ANJANA Gamage

SRI LANKA has received the Best Poster Award of Tourism from the South Asian countries at the World Tourism Organisation General assembly held last year from November 25 to December 2, in Senegal, Africa.

The winning poster depicts a photograph of sun-set with birds and a branch of a tree, designed by G. Malaviarachchi, Assistant Art Director of Sri Lanka Tourist Board.

Sri Lanka was represented at the WTO General assembly by the Director General of the SLTB S. Kalaiselvam and the Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Tourism George Michael.

According to the Director General, WTO celebrates the World Tourism Day on September 27 every year and Sri Lanka has been selected as the host country for the year 2007.

The theme for the 2007 will be tourism's employment opportunities for women.

"Selecting us as a host country is a good opportunity. We are planning to have a series of activities in Sri Lanka where the World Tourism Organisation (WTO) has pledged to provide a wide publicity for the series of events in 2007.

This year (2006) we have planned to have the World Tourism Day on September 27 in Yapahuwa, signing the event from the route Daludagama to Maho and to Yapahuwa," Kalaiselvam said.

Meanwhile Sri Lanka has also been elected as a member country to serve in the WTO programme committee for the next two years- 2006/2007 as well.

Another significant suggestion made at last year's general assembly was the sorting out of the confusion over the WTO; whether it is World Tourism Organisation or World Trade Organisation.

At last year's general assembly, it was changed to United Nations World Tourism Organisation.