Sri Lanka Tourism targets over US $ 1 b in 2011

Hemanthi GURUGE

Sri Lanka Tourism has earned over US$ 390,000 in revenue for the past 15 days of this year.

Sri Lanka Tourism Chairman Nalaka Godahewa told Daily News Business that by the end of this year they expect a revenue of US $ 1 billion. According to data released by the Tourism Promotion Bureau, there were 60,000 tourist arrivals for the past 15 days of this year and this is expected to increase to 100,000 by the end of this month. Sri Lanka's tourist arrivals increased by 30 percent to 855,975 from January to December in 2011 compared to the same period in 2010. This is the first time ever that the tourism industry arrivals passed the 800,000 mark. This year has also seen a massive contribution to the arrivals from India, Japan, Germany, the U.K, France, the Netherlands and other countries.

He also said that the tourism arrivals are expected to increase sharply over the next few years due to intensive marketing of Sri Lanka as a world class tourist destination. With the expected increase in tourist arrivals, they believe that hotels would be in full occupancy. Therefore, Sri Lanka must increase the number of its hotel rooms by the end of this year to meet the new requirement, he said.

Sri Lanka Tourism has launched the 'Home Stay' concept to meet the rising demand of hotel occupancy and the intention of this concept is to focus on lifestyles and life experiences.

Sri Lanka tourism has also made the necessary arrangements to hold the Sancharaka Udawa 2012 at the Ceylon Continental Hotel on January 31. The aim of this event is to give companies and individuals with unique offerings, who out of the large scale business category, a chance to showcase their products and services into the public.