Room Stock: Sri Lanka needs massive increase in hotel rooms
Sri Lanka needs a massive increase in hotel accommodation to cope with the anticipated influx of tourists with the end of the 30-year ethnic war, a senior travel trade official said.
"The eradication of terrorism and the country returning to normal have created a window of opportunity and a conducive business environment for tourism," said Chandra Wickramasinghe, President of the Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Tour Operators (SLAITO).
"The main infrastructure requirement in Sri Lanka in the present situation is to have a minimum of 25,000 rooms of three- to five-star category."
Sri Lanka now has a total of 14,793 rooms with about 3,000 in the five-star category and about 1,400 in the three- and four-star categories, according to tourism authority statistics.
There was an immediate increase in tourist arrivals when the ethnic war ended in May with government forces defeating the Tamil Tiger rebels.
Tourist arrivals in August 2009 rose 34.3 percent to 41,207 from a year ago, led by visitors from key markets like the UK, Germany, India, the Tourism Authority said.
It was the third straight monthly rise in visitors since May, although the numbers were slightly lower than in July as these months are the off-season.
Wickramasinghe said in a statement released by SLAITO that the tourism industry was "the most victimized industry" of the conflict which had cost the industry over 12 billion US dollars in the past 25 years.
The tourism industry has launched a work plan towards increasing the annual inbound tourist traffic to Sri Lanka with several events and activities, he said.
It aims to attract 2.5 million tourists by 2016, from almost half-a-million a year now.
"To achieve this, we will need to have careful and effective planning in infrastructure development to meet the qualitative and quantitative demand of the modern day world tourism," Wickramasinghe said.
He also said inbound tour operators will especially focus on the island's east, known to have some of the country's best beaches but which have been mostly inaccessible during the war.
The inbound tour operators of Sri Lanka are set to travel to the eastern port town of Trincomalee for their annual meeting because of a major future development in tourism for the east coast.
"With the reopening of the east coast as a prime tourist destination in the world, Sri Lanka will certainly come back to be a country never out of season," he said.
"This will not only negate the off-season mentality but also will make the east coast the new-found destination in world tourism."
(Source: LBO – 11 Sept, 2009)