Bloom Consulting ups Lanka Tourism rating

Bloom Consulting in their Bloom Consulting Country Branding Ranking, has placed Sri Lanka in the 105th position for Trade and 76 position for Tourism,

According to the rating Lanka has lost eight positions in Trade and won seven positions in Tourism. Overall, the USA retains its' top spot and Asian countries reinforce their position in the top 25.

In Trade, despite 13 out of the top 25 coming from Europe, the 2012 Ranking showed strong growth distributing among all continents.

Four other noticeable improvements were Brazil (11), Australia (12), India (15) and Kazakhstan (19) joined for the first time the top 25 performers.

For Tourism, Asia, in particular performed extremely well in the 2012 ranking. Eight Asian countries finished in the top 25, with China as number four. Aided by both strong tourism receipts and CBS Ratings, Thailand (6) and Malaysia (14) significantly improved from last year.

For the first time, Macao was evaluated as an individual country and finished with a bang at number eight. A notable absence was Japan.

The 2012 Bloom Consulting Country Branding Ranking is a thorough study measuring the effectiveness of each country's brand strategy, separately evaluating the trade and tourism country brand strategies, and comprising of 160 and 161 countries respectively.

The Ranking relies on hard facts, which include the economic performance and the economic growth of countries.

For tourism these are represented by the annual intake and the annual growth rate of global tourist receipts.

For trade these are characterized by the annual intake and the annual growth rate of global FDI inflow.

This hard data is accompanied by soft facts, thereby measuring the economic impact of each country's brand strategy.