Short term tourism advertising campaign in Beijing

A.G. PIYADASA

SRI LANKA Tourists Board (SLTB) launched an advertising campaign in Beijing commencing January 12 for three months.

This short-term advertising campaign will be on seven buses, which will include the routes T8, 834, 47, 57, 101, 104 and 109 covering the entire city of Beijing.

The advertisements feature Goodwill Tourism Ambassador for Sri Lanka Xu Jinglei, together with the tourist attractions. The main objective of this campaign is to attract more Chinese visitors to Sri Lanka during the Chinese New Year, which falls in early February this year.

Depending on the success of this campaign, it is expected to extend this campaign to other major tourist generating cities of China. The advertising campaign was co-ordinated by the Sri Lanka Embassy in Beijing.

The Sri Lanka Embassy has issued over 1300 visas for the Chinese tourists visiting Sri Lanka during the Chinese New Year period starting from January 29, 2006.

This is the highest number of visas issued by the mission during such a holiday period. During the year 2005, there were 9,668 Chinese tourists to Sri lanka showing an increase of 6.4%.