Budget 2012 to be presented in Parliament later this month is expected to give relief to the tourism industry.
This was said by Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority Chairman Dr. Nalaka Godahewa to reporters on Wednesday after it was brought to his notice the difficulty the industry is facing to build the necessary infrastructure due to rising costs.
It is estimated that the cost to build a four star hotel room alone is Rs. 16 million.
An industry source told this reporter that as a result of those high costs no new investments are taking place in the East coast though there is land available.
Except for a few top of the line hotels like those belonging to the John Keells Leisure Group, other industry players have been slow to invest in their product due to the island’s previous debilitating 26 year old terrorist war which hit tourism and which only ended two years ago.
As such to take advantage of the post war tourism boom in the island there is a need for the industry to spend on infrastructure development, which however is affected due to the high costs involved in such investments coupled with high borrowing costs.
Relief is also expected in the sphere of electricity tariffs to the industry which is currently a hybrid between industry and commercial rates.
Government of Sri Lanka plans to attract 750,000 tourists by the year end and 2.5 million by 2016.
Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators President Nilmin Nanayakkara said that this year’s target would be met. He also expected the current winter season to witness a 30% year on year (YoY) growth in tandem with the growth the industry experienced in the first nine months of the year of 30.1%, but much lower than the previous winter’s growth of 46.1%.
One of the chief reasons for this slowdown is due to the recessionary fears in the West on account of the euro debt crisis.
The industry’s cash cow is also the winter traffic from the West. Though India from a country perspective is the source of the highest number of tourist arrivals to the island, from a spending and from a “stay” perspective, the tourist from the West easily surpasses his Indian counterpart. The Indians who come here for shopping are low budget tourists, staying for a mere three days, whereas the Western tourist wintering here, generally stays in star class hotels for a minimum of 10 days.
Tourism Mart
A buyer-seller mart linking tour operators with service providers will take place in Colombo on January 31 of next year.
This will be the second successive year that such a mart will be held. It’s organized by the Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators. This year’s mart drew in 100 exhibitors and 300 buyers while the numbers of the former expected to double next year.
The services providers are not those who market hotel supplies, but rather hotel suppliers or sellers of hotel rooms, adventure tourism providers, tourist guides and such like.
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$ 20 Visa Fee
The proposed visa fees, subject to Cabinet approval, will be US$ ($) 20 for visitors from non SAARC member countries and $ 10 for SAARC member countries. Children under 12 will be exempt from the requirement of visas, so also transit passengers, upto 48 hours.
This was said by Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority Chairman Dr. Nalaka Godahewa to reporters on Wednesday.
The rates are expected to be effective from next year.
Previously the Government of Sri Lanka wanted to charge a flat visa fee of $ 50 from all tourists visiting the country. But this proposal drew flak from the industry as well as from countries in the SAARC region (see connected story found elsewhere on this page).
Currently visitors to the island are given visas on arrival free of charge.
Crosswoods holidays 2011
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