Sri Lanka Tourism: Resilience and courage on the rocky up road

Geoff WIJESINGHE

Being possibly the most senior travel journalist in the country today, beginning in 1962 as the travel correspondent of the Ceylon Daily Mirror, I thought that I could make a few observations on Sri Lanka’s tourism industry.

As a little boy, I used to stand beside the railings of the quaint wooden Old Jetty of the Colombo Harbour and gaze at the picturesque sight of the passenger and cargo ships berthed on the deep green waters.

I used to accompany my father to his office at the Central Y.M.C.A. and then stroll across to the Old Wooden Jetty which was then located at the Colombo Port Commission Head Office building opposite the Grand Oriental Hotel.

Excursion

I watched with awe as boatloads of excursion tourists spending from a few hours to a couple of days moved back and forth from ship to shore. Traders in canoes loaded with an assortment of locally produced goods-curios, batiks, a full range of other handicrafts, tea, fruits etc. engaged with tourists on deck in hectic bargaining.

The tiny canoes, which were popularly known as bumboats were a great attraction and added to the old world charm.

They were paddled to and fro carrying excited tourists on rides round the harbour, while passenger launches chugged along on their routine rounds servicing all the ships anchored in the port - a beautiful blend of ancient and modern.

It was in the Colombo Harbour that the pioneers of the local tourist industry cut their teeth. Dedicated men like P.A. Ediriweera, Don Liyanage, Jim Wanigatunge, Eustace Ranasinghe, Charlie Nanayakara, Amara Amaratunge using excursionist traffic as bread and butter tourism began building the tourist industry brick by brick through blood, sweat and tears, while seeking new pastures in the West targeting the foreign individual tourists and small groups.

They sought and found discerning high spending tourists in the United States, UK and Western Europe who found Sri Lanka a demi paradise.

There were times they had to go hungry, sell their possessions to keep afloat. The excursion traffic reached its peak during the 1950s and ‘60s with hordes of migrants from the UK and Europe voyaging to Australia to begin new lives Down Under.

During this boom, the big ocean liners such as Canberra, Oriana, Stratheden, Himalaya, pride of the P&O fleet, were regular callers in Colombo. There were also Lloyd Triestiano passenger ships doing the same run while the impressive Bibby passenger cargo vessels were a regular feature.

In 1948 at the age of 13 I accompanied my father on board the Bibby Liner ‘Herefordshire’ to bade farewell to our small contingent bound for the Olympic Games in London. It was a memorable picture yet framed in my mind, standing on the deck quite thrilled in the presence of such greats as the captain of the team Duncan White who won a silver, Albert Perera, to my mind the best boxer we have ever produced, Alex Obeysekere, Leslie Handunge, Eddie Gray, G.D. Peiris and a few others. It was evening and sun was setting in the west, very poignant, still etched in my memory.

However, since the early 1960s, increasingly large numbers of tourists arrived by air, individually, in groups and in planeloads of back-to-back charters.

Hospitality industry

Large business conglomerates, which had hitherto not entered the hospitality industry, began investing heavily in the tourist plant. Hotels such as Ceylon Intercontinental and Oberoi, the Hilton, Taj Samudra, Holiday Inn strengthened the already existing hotel sector.

The Ceylon Hotels Corporation also continues to play a significant role.

The resort hotels led by the Bentota Beach which was opened by Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike as Prime Minister, was the harbinger of the chain, extending from the entire southwestern to the southern coasts. Mrs. Bandaranaike, from her first term as Prime Minister, took a personal interest in the development of the hospitality industry.

The red tape bound Ceylon Tourist Bureau which was located near the Port Terminal Building was moved to the location which now houses the five-star Taj Samudra Hotel. The Bureau was renamed the Ceylon Tourist Board. Successive governments have made significant development in the industry since then with considerable progress being made.

Air Ceylon was the first national carrier and had tie ups with KLM, BOAC and Qantas. With the advent of air travel, a number of international airlines began operating in this country, some by having flights into Katunayake while others had their offices here.

Air Ceylon, which was plagued by dissension and non-profitability finally closed shop and made way for Airlanka, which operated on an international network. The national airline then changed its name to SriLankan following a management agreement with Emirates. Today, the management is entirely SriLankan.

National carrier

It was unfortunate that the agreement signed with Emirates was very one-sided, weighted heavily in favour of the Dubai-based airline.

The value of having a national airline must be realised from the fact that times of crises such as the JVP insurgencies which threatened to bring the country to a standstill and three decades of naked LTTE terror, it was the national airline that carried the tourist industry and the country’s international travel links on its shoulders.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has had the wisdom to abrogate the agreement with Emirates in the national interest. It was during the tenure of President Chandrika Kumaratunga that this disastrous agreement with Emirates was signed. The UNP was very critical at the time of this tie up. But when Ranil Wickremesinghe came into power, the UNP did sweet nothing to correct the situation.

The new management must tread carefully, take wise decisions in the national interest, have proper planning and must be allowed to take professional decisions which they should be found accountable. Nothing ad-hoc. If this is done, we will have a profitable truly national carrier for the first time in the history of aviation in this country.

According to reports, tourism, which is the country’s fourth largest foreign exchange earner, has targeted one million arrivals in 2008. This is almost double that of the total for 2007, which was 494,000.

At the same time, the traditional traffic from Western Europe with Germany being the largest segment, and the UK, continues despite all sorts of doomsday predictions made by anti-national, anti-social elements in this country.

The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority has replaced the Sri Lanka Tourist Board and with Renton de Alwis, a dynamic private sector oriented administrator with expertise in marketing heading it as chairman, the administration is breaking the shackles of red tapeism.

Tourism promotion

There is also the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Authority. The former is the Regulatory Body and the latter tasked with promoting the hospitality industry. It is essential that these two key bodies should dovetail into each other for the rapid growth of tourism. The private sector has and must continue to play an essential vibrant role in the development of the country’s hospitality industry.

In promoting tourism, we have to be updated with the latest world trends, both in marketing and in service.

Travel agents must be given maximum support to have their own representatives abroad while operating within the ambit of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Authority. Travel agents in foreign countries should be given every possible incentive to channel tourists to this country.

Sri Lanka is one of the most beautiful destinations in the world, with rich vegetation, green hills, tea gardens, golden beaches, cultural heritages, and climates ranging from tropical to Mediterranean.

The hospitality industry in this country has had to weather many a storm, turbulence, terrible vicissitudes such as insurgencies, bombings, terrorism, but it has shown great resilience, courage and fortitude amidst all these, picked itself up after each disaster and steadily forged ahead.

And, Sri Lanka tourism continues to progress amidst the storms and thistles on the rocky up road to further success.