Getting tourists back: Talk about the suicide bomb saga or keep mum?

Every day people die from something other than sickness or old age. Death visits in many ways to collect its victims. Floods, landslides, accidents, wars, suicide bombs. There is a story everyday about death collecting victims. We are neither shocked nor surprised to read about it. That’s the way it is. Another suicide bomb that went off somewhere is just another event. We have to get the many ways that death descends upon us and its impact on people into some realistic perspective. 

We read that a husband and wife on a motorcycle crashed into a tree and died. What do most of us do? We turn the page and continue reading the paper. We don’t grab our wallets and go searching for the family of the deceased to see whether they are in need of anything. But there will be weeping and great concern for the now parentless children in their village and amongst the close relatives. That is how it is always. Those directly affected mourn and generally the rest of the world to use (a good colloquial expression) does not give a shit and continue with their lives.

To the rest of the world, the suicide bomb attacks here and the deaths it caused will be like deaths caused by suicide bombs in Afghanistan, or deaths caused by floods, earthquakes, or migrant boats capsizing and sending many to death by drowning. They will turn the page and focus on the next item in the newspaper or broad cast.

The only ones really concerned about our bombs were those that had booked to come.

Keep mum

If we keep mum, my hypothesis is that our bad experience will be like those caused by other bombs, floods, earthquakes or gunfire, etc., that are all forgotten after you turn the page in the paper or when the next item comes up on BBC or CNN .It will soon be forgotten by 99.9% of the world population.

The minuscule part of the world population that will think about it are those who had already planned to visit Sri Lanka. We should not make great efforts to remind incessantly the other vast potential of tourists out there in the world about the suicide bombs.

We are barely scratching the surface of the tourism opportunity. Last year Thailand had 38 milion tourists and Malaysia had 25 million tourists. We must not jeopardise our ability to attract tourists.

Preserving tourism as our oil well

Every part of our society must behave in manner that will preserve the potential of tourism. It is the only sure-fire engine for growth. 

We must together proactively do four positive things.

1. Work hard on getting all adverse travel advisories changed.

2. Stop telling the world that our top officials were incompetent and that is why it all happened

3. With vigour promote Sri Lanka as a great tourist destination.

4. We must stop reminding the world that we had a suicide bomb episode with bad casualties.

So for example the good Cardinal and his bishops should stop asking for an enquiry and should desist from having events to remind people of the suicide bombs. It is a good thing to repair the church that was damaged. The priests in charge must resist the vanity of wanting to see their pictures in the paper with ceremonies to celebrate the restoration. That does not do an iota of good but on the other hand will remind the world that we had a suicide bomb episode. 

It is good to collect money to help those affected but it should be done discreetly. The world will forget, and we should not go on reminding them 

We must punish those who were negligent, but this should be done discreetly. Banner headlines in the newspapers about prosecuting those alleged to be guilty of neglect, that allowed the suicide episodes to happen, does not help the cause of letting the world forget the suicide bomb episode or to make them believe it will not happen again

It does the image of our country a great deal of harm if we persist in giving high publicity to incompetence of top officials.

Regaining tourism

If we do these things, we will regain tourism. Whilst all are important, the most important is promoting Sri Lanka as a destination. There is a major flaw in the process of how promotion is managed. Tourism is a private sector industry, but sadly the Government (the politicians and bureaucrats) who know nothing about marketing and promotion have a prominent role – and, not surprisingly, have not performed.

The Treasury is loath to release funds as they do not see its importance and as the Treasury is forever short of funds, they have found one excuse or another not to release funds. Then we have a bureaucracy wanting to get their finger into it and approve plans and agreements. I read that the AG’s Department has joined the party to approve the agreements to carry out promotions. So for one bad reason or another bad reason we have had no sustained promotion for a long time.

Private sector is to blame

The private sector must take on a strong proactive role. At last a glimmer of hope. A private sector alliance has been formed. It must be aggressive.

Tourism now touches the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and can give the kiss of prosperity to them. We must tell the people about the Government’s failure to promote tourism. We must make it a political issue and insist that all candidates for high office clearly state what they will do for tourism. 

Finally I like to quote from an article I wrote in the Daily FT in 2016.The whole article is in my book.

Tourism can be Sri Lanka’s oil well if we drill with the correct marketing tools

“Tourism is a private sector industry. The knowledge of good processes and good people are both in the private sector. It has struggled for a long time to wrest from the State sector the right to be the major players in formulating the strategy for tourism.

“Many years ago to resolve this issue the tourism cluster of the NCED succeeded in getting a new Act. The Tourism Act No. 58 of 2005 provides for a Tourism Promotion Bureau with a majority private sector presence. Sadly things did not work out as hoped for and it has continued to be difficult to get a collaborative approach with the private sector playing the major role.

The problem

“Promoting tourism is felt to be something that anyone with a little common sense can do. Politicians have not really understood that it is essential to find people with the right marketing experience. As a result, over the years there has been a string of political appointments for the top roles in tourism. 

The way forward

“The private sector must create its own tourism institute. It must take on the role of developing promotional strategies and executing them. The State should play two roles. It should provide the funds for promotion or remove some of the taxes and let the private sector collect its own funds or create a fund with taxes collected. The other key role of the State is to provide the infrastructure that is essential.”

The private sector must take on the challenge to regain tourism, after all it is indeed a private sector industry.