Tourism Ambassadors’ mission successful

The inaugural assignment of Arjuna Ranatunge and Aravinda De Silva as Tourism Ambassadors for Sri Lanka brought in immediate results at the last week’s Ramayana launch in New Delhi and Economic Summit in Gurgaon at Metropolitan hotel in Delhi last week.

Apart from their formal representations, the much respected duo in the Indian soil, created an unprecedented emotional dimension into the programmes with Indians still having in their memory the performances of the cricket heroes particularly in the nineties including the world cup in 1996.

The event saw a media outburst followed by speeches of the Tourism Ambassadors stressing the bond between the two countries not only in historic sense but also in the present day in politics, economy and sports.

The revelation of Ramayana sites in Sri Lanka is expected to spur thousands of Indians to visit these sites in this year particularly after the industry becomes fully geared to offer packages.

The Indian media has already given enough publicity through print and electronic media justifying all the hard work that has gone into to the research work of identifying the sites that Sita Amman has visited in Sri Lanka.

Gurgaon also saw 150 Indian corporates attending.

The Speakers at this occasion were the two Ministers Dr Sarath Amunugama, Prof Peiris and Chairman of the Ceylon Chamber Mahen Dayananda followed by a presentation on Investment potential by the BOI officials.

The Sri Lankan delegation also attended the evening dinner hosted by the Chief Minister of Haryana Pradradesh.

The Bureau made arrangements with Business Standard to publish a six-page supplement on the 16 January.