Swedish Lanka partnership to open in August:

Negombo gets first resort with water bungalows

Sri Lanka’s much awaited and long overdue hotel with water bungalows, would open in August in Negombo.

The hotel to be branded as Suriya Luxury Resorts, is being build by a joint partnership with Eric Suriyasena, owner of Goldi Sands Hotel and a Swedish entrepreneur.

Suriyasena said that the main aim to build this property was to breach a huge gap in the local leisure sector, sans a water bungalow bordering the sea. He said that initially, they would build 56 rooms, which include six water villas. This would be completed at the beginning of August, targetting winter traffic. “Subsequently, we would add 30 rooms which would also include an additional 24 water villas.”

He said that they hoped to market the water villas for a sum over US $ 200, as a special promotion and later would look at increasing the prices. He said a Swedish investor in the restaurant business in Sweden, would invest 20%, while the balance would be from their own funds and borrowings from a local bank. The total investment would be US $ 12 million. This had been the first time that a Swedish investor was investing outside his country. The group had acquired an eight acre land, which included an abandoned prawn farm for the building of this hotel. “The theme of this resort would be Adventure and Art, since I too owns Suriya Batiks.”

He said that with tourism growing, they hoped to maintain an occupancy of over 60 YoY and are looking at the RoI in four to five years. He said that forward bookings for the property was good and the ITB would help them market the property more aggressively among travel agents.

Meanwhile Niresh Suriyasena, Managing Director of the company, said that the large swimming pool too would be a major attraction.“While providing over 120 employment opportunities, it would also provide another 200 indirect employment opportunities, the welfare of the residents a key to our success and the support we received from them so far had been tremendous.”

The Group also owns and manages the 86 room Goldi Sands hotel in Negombo.

Goldi Sands too had undergone a major refurbishment drive recently.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's participants have been happy with the arrangements put together by the Sri Lankn Embassy in Germany. The Managing Director of Sri Lanka Tourism Promotions Bureau, Rumy Jauffer, said that they would look to providing additional staff to the Embassy to promote tourism in a bigger way.