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By Charumini de Silva
The Bohra Global Convention starting next week in Sri Lanka will be a great boost for tourism and consolidating interfaith harmony post Easter Sunday tragedy a top Minister said on Thursday.
The first-ever ‘carbon-neutral’, Ashara Mubaraka is scheduled to be held from 1 to 10 September which will draw around 25,000 religious visitors from 40 countries, while the economic benefit to the country may well be in excess of $ 50 million.
“The Bohra Global Convention was initially expected to bring in 20,000 people from 40 countries to the island for a period of up to three weeks. Now, I have been told that this figure has gone up to 25,000 and participants have already begun arriving at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) from Wednesday,” Tourism and Christian Affairs Minister John Amaratunga told the media.
He said the 10-day spiritual convention is probably the single biggest event to be hosted in Colombo in recent times. The Bohra community this year has titled the convention, ‘We Believe in Sri Lanka’, aims at zero food and plastic waste, making it the first carbon-neutral religious commemoration held at the Dawoodi Bohra Masjid in Marine Drive, Colombo-4.
The Minister assured that all necessary security measures have been arranged to ensure absolute safety.
Noting that most of the participants are expected to tour the country either before or after the event, he said will bring much needed revenue and stimulate the hospitality sector in all tourist hotspots across the island. However, he said the main beneficiaries will be Colombo city hotels which are expected to be operating at full capacity or 100% occupancy during the event period.
“I have been told that three-star and four-star hotels which were selling rooms at $ 70 dollars as of yesterday were selling at $ 140 now. As of yesterday Rs. 400 million worth of hotel bookings had been made with much more to come,” Amaratunga said.
The Minister also said that free visa facility would be extended to all countries that the participants are said to be travelling from. “Although we have extended the free visa-on-arrival for just 39 countries, for this conference Immigration and Emigration Department has decided to extend it to all countries who are coming for this Bohra Global Convention,” Amaratunga added.
Immigration and Emigration Department Controller General Pasan Ratnayake said they are going to arrange separate counters for the convention participants at BIA.
“We have now organised to face all probabilities to facilitate large number of tourists coming for the convention. For the issuance of visa, we have arranged ETA online system and for the countries ETA is not available we discussed for a separate arrangement,” he added.
The Minister however, instructed the Controller General to proactively share information on the arrival lounge on visa process, as there were complaints on complications at the immigration to obtain visa.
“We have to ensure that the services would be perfect and without any breakdown maybe at the airport, immigration, transportation, hotels and so on,” he said.
Sri Lanka last played host to Ashara Mubaraka five times with the last one in 2007. Dr. Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin, the spiritual leader of the international Dawoodi Bohra community, along with thousands of devout Muslims from around the world, gather every year in a 10-day long period that sees the community mourn the martyrdom of Prophet Mohammed’s grandson Imam Hussain.
The Minister also thanked the Bohra community for the trust they placed in Sri Lanka and convincing their spiritual leader to hold the convention in Colombo.
“After having been named the ‘The best destination in the world for 2019’ by Lonely Planet, Sri Lanka did not deserve to be penalised by the terror attacks. That is why even after the attacks Lonely Planet renamed Sri Lanka as the Best Destination once again. Not only that, Sri Lanka was also named the Best Island destination by Travel and Leisure magazine just a few weeks ago. All this positive global publicity has helped to overcome the initial setback and return to normalcy much faster than industry expectations,” he added.
Amaratunga said currently Sri Lanka is averaging over 5,000 arrivals per day with the figure going up to 6,000 on some days. “Prior to the attacks the average arrivals per day was around 7,000. So we are almost there and it is now a matter of weeks rather than months for the industry to return to normal,” he stressed.
