Perspective :

Biggest bonanza

Geoff WIJESINGHE

The capturing of the LTTE headquarters at Kilinochchi and the imminent annihilation of the terrorists by our heroic Security Forces was the biggest economic bonanza that Sri Lanka has had for the last three decades.

The tourist industry which has been possibly the hardest hit by LTTE terrorism heaved a sigh of relief, as the news broke that the Tiger citadel had been demolished.

The principal disincentive for the progress of the hospitality industry is now being removed and the storm clouds that were hovering over tourism are now receding.

True, there has been a 10 per cent drop last year and the immediate prospects are rather grim.But, the rainbow can be seen in the not too distant horizon and ‘somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue’.

However,the global financial crisis has caused a decline in tourism,worldwide.

This is affecting us as well,and is another phenomenon we have to deal with.In fact in 2008 Sri Lanka tourism which was near static and even experienced a growth of 18.4 per cent in May recorded drops in traffic in July (25.3 pc), August(31.4pc), September(20.4pc),October(5.2pc) and November (18.2pc). The December figures were not available at the time of writing. There were 432,892 arrivals up to November in 2007 as against 389,550 for the same period in 2008. The total arrivals in 2007, as of end December were 494,008.

The Government has taken cognizance of problems being experienced by the country’s fourth largest foreign exchange earner which is termed an’invisible export’ and taken a number of concrete measures to give significant relief to the tourist industry which is very vital to the economy.

Another very welcome move is to use the Tourism Cess Fund of around Rs.1 billion annually to promote Sri Lanka tourism.

In 2007, the hospitality industry saw an impressive rise in upmarket traffic and this augurs well for the future.These visitors had expressed total satisfaction and commended the hospitality they experienced on holidays which they described as being “very happy”.

A senior travel agent who specializes in up market traffic said there was a surge in highly profitable upmarket Foreign Individual Tourists (FITs) in 2008.These tourists have gone back and praised the Sri Lanka tourism.This word of mouth publicity in the best form of advertising.

Sri Lanka tourism has right along been climbing up a hard rocky road, but has through dint of perseverence, courage, resilience, born of the knowledge that the Sri Lanka tourist product is as good as the best, if not the best in the market we have progressed slowly, but surely on the uproad of pausing to overcome road blocks and other obstacles that come its way from time to time.

Sri Lanka tourism has taken many a beating due to no fault of its own,but with head unbowed moved forward.What is called for today is a ‘holding’ operation for the industry to survive until better times which could not be as long as most think, for the latest reports state that the relief packages provided by the United States and other Governments are already impacting favourably on the world economy and international stock markets have recorded impressive gains.