Major refurbishment drive needed:

Hotels ready for tourist influx

Harshini PERERA

Sri Lanka is equipped with 14,000 rooms in 250 hotels to cater to half a million tourists from various destinations now.

Tourists at Sigiriya. File photo

The present capacity of the leisure sector will be sufficient to meet the current requirement but these hotels need to be refurbished. Considering the target of 2.5 million tourists by 2015, the present capacity of accommodation will not be sufficient, a senior tourism official said.

Some of the hotels have already started refurbishment and others should also get started, Sri Lanka Tourist Development Authority Director General S. Kalaiselvam told Daily News Business. “Tourists arrivals was 2 percent in 2008 and 2009 but in the first three months of this year it increased to 20 percent. Fifty percent of the hoteliers should go for refurbishment soon,” he said.

He said that at present Hotels in the Northern and Eastern part of Sri Lanka do not cater to the demand. It is expected that in 2012 numerous hotels will come up in these areas. The “Sri Lanka Tourist Development Authority is in the process of identifying locations for tourism in the Northern and Eastern areas. The selected land will soon be leased out to build hotels,” Kalaiselvam said.

“We have already developed two islands for tourism in Kalpitiya and will call tenders for the rest of the six islands in the future,”he said. He said most of the hoteliers today are investing in North and East.

The hotel school in Colombo is well-equipped with facilities to train the necessary staff for the industry.

He said hotel schools in Kandy, Anuradhapura, Bandarawela, Koggala will more effectively cater to the industry. The salary scales in the hotel industry have also gone up while a person’s salary is ultimately decided by the hotel.