Stafford Hotels achieves 155% rise in profits

Club Hotel Dolphin (Stafford Hotels PLC) has managed to completely go against the trend and achieve a spectacular Rs. 8.3 million net profit, up 155%, from a profit of Rs. 3.2 million during the corresponding period last year. Possibly, no other resort hotel in Sri Lanka has achieved such a strong performance during Q1.

CEO, Srilal Miththapala explained the reasons for this success "good strategic planning, continuous value addition, innovation and excellent team work are the pillars of this success.

In 2005, against all odds, we decided to forge ahead with building a second swimming pool and adding 25

 more rooms to our inventory. This is currently paying rich dividends, where with a total 150 rooms we can juggle our portfolio and market mix, while the second pool adds flexibility and helps differentiate our product offering.

We have continuously added value to our product and in the past two years, we have added mini outdoor Spa treatments, a fully fledged gymnasium, a well equipped Business Center and wi-fi hot spots in the hotel. As guest services, we have introduced horse riding, canoeing and our animation team has introduced many new skits including excerpts for River Dance, Grease.

Club Hotel Dolphin is one of the leading hotels of First Choice, UKs largest tour operator and has won the First Choice Gold Award for customer satisfaction for the third consecutive year.

This is purely based on 100% customer feedback and it is indeed a unique achievement by the hotel.

Taking advantage of its unique location in close proximity to the International Airport and one hours drive from Colombo, the hotel has explored several other market segments such as Airline crew, Connecting Passenger Services and MICE business, all of which now contributes to over 40% of the entire business identified.

As the No 1 Corporate hotel outside Colombo, Club Hotel Dolphin is the choice of most corporates. The idyllic setting and the spacious banquet facilities has made a name for the hotel for both foreign and Sri Lankan weddings. Under the theme 'Dream weddings' the hotel offers a truly Sri Lankan experience for foreign couples who celebrate their wedding at Club Hotel Dolphin.

Srilal Miththapala went on to say "none of this performance would have been possible without a very close knit, high performing team, under the guidance of S. Anandaraj, Director Operations at Serendib Leisure Management General Manager, Saman Ranasinghe and his team have been able to continuously deliver consistent customer satisfaction.

The CEO Miththapla went on to say "Following the steep downturn in tourism early this year, there were price wars and controversies raging about occupancies and rates.

"He pointed out that occupancy and rates are directly co-related, and it is futile to only talk about high occupancy rate,s while resulting yields are low, Hoteliering is also a business, and all the debates of occupancies and rates are futile, if at the end of the day, the business is not profitable. Dolphin's performance speaks for itself," he said.

SriLankan on e-ticketing targets

SriLankan Airlines flying high with paperless travel SriLankan Airlines is on track to reach global e-ticketing targets this year, with 80 percent of its tickets issued worldwide now in an e-ticket format.

The country's national carrier, SriLankan Airlines has been driving the changeover to electronic ticketing since January 2006, a process that has begun paying dividends. From January to June this year the airline's overall e-ticketing penetration spiked from 30 percent to 80 percent with issue of nearly72, 000 e-tickets versus nearly 18,000 paper tickets in June.

These sales are entirely through travel agents, though adding up sales from the airline's ticket offices and online portal could take penetration to over 90 percent.

"This is an outstanding achievement for SriLankan Airlines and we have made remarkable progress in spreading e-ticketing across our network in so short a time.

There's no doubt that e-ticketing is helping passengers around the world in terms of convenience and the airline to increase productivity," Manoj Gunawardena, Head of Worldwide Passenger Sales at SriLankan Airlines said.

"We have already achieved a high number of e-ticket sales in the airline's own reservations system and in global distribution systems. With the addition of more airline partners we believe that we will be able to reach the goal of achieving 100% e-ticketing by the end of 2007."

It took six months to put the necessary technology and technical expertise in place to enable travel agents and the airline's ticketing and reservation systems to process e-tickets. SriLankan Airlines has also tied up with 40 interline e-ticketing airline partners to date, completing the projects in record time.

A total of 50 interline agreements are likely to be finalised by year-end, putting SriLankan in the top tier of airlines to do so.