SL Tourism honours outstanding tour operators of UK

Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, on its way towards achieving a golden double on one million arrivals and US $ one billion revenue this year, paid tribute to tour operators based in UK who promote Sri Lanka.This nobel mission was also supported by Sri Lanka Association for Inbound Tour Operators (SLAITO), which conducted the selection process in appreciation of their excellence in performance during the year 2011. Under this KUONI UK was named as the top operator followed by Mercury Direct and TUI UK and they were duly recognized at the WTM Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau Stand.

This year a record 53 Travel Trade Companies from Sri Lanka participated and all of them were successful enough to link up with their international counterparts and thereby create an imprint of Sri Lanka Tourism in the world market.

During the four days of the WTM exhibition, the leading global event of Travel and Tourism Trade, the stakeholders of Sri Lanka Tourism came across with the great opportunity of meeting Tour Agencies around the globe.

The stall of SLTPB in WTM which was definitely better than some other stands of the neighbouring countries, came in to sharp focus during the first two days when a traditional wedding ceremony, enriched with custom with British models were featured at the stall. This was mainly with the intention of promoting Sri Lanka as a wedding and honeymoon destination. In the third day of the exhibition, SLTPB focused on highlighting Sri Lanka as a cricketing destination and steps were taken to distribute Sri Lanka Cricket T-shirts and souvenirs to the visitors, besides a number of other promotional activities.

Meanwhile, the first three days of World Travel Market 2012, the leading global event for the travel industry, experienced an impressive visitor increase of 4%. November 5 to 7 saw 38,735 visitors walk through the doors of ExCeL – London to attend WTM 2012, reveals unaudited figures. This compares to 37,331 across the first three days of WTM 2011.

November 7 saw a phenomenal 9% visitor increase, compared to the equivalent day the previous year, taking the total visitor number 13,638.

On November 6, more than 17,000 (17,105) visitors came to WTM, a 1% increase on the second day of last year’s event.

Tuesday is the busiest day of WTM as it is the first day the event is open to the whole industry following on from the exhibitor-invite only policy on the Monday.

The first day of WTM 2012 was a resounding success with exhibitor invitation visitors up 5% on last year’s event to almost 8,000 (7,992). Reed Travel Exhibitions Director World Travel Market Simon Press said that these figures demonstrate the power and importance of WTM to the industry and the role it plays in facilitating business for sector.