Friday Nov 15, 2024
Friday Nov 15, 2024
Thursday, 9 May 2019 00:33 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Sri Lanka Tourism yesterday said despite the recent tragic setbacks the country experienced, global travellers who are comforted by assurances by the Tri-forces and political leadership are starting to show renewed confidence.
It said this is amplified by the interest from travel writers and bloggers who wish to explore, photograph, and promote this picturesque destination.
The Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau is hosting famed international social media influencers who arrived in the country on 7 May, and will be here until 19 May. Their intention is to continue to promote Sri Lanka as a key destination for the global travel community, particularly in markets like USA, UK, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Australia, India, France, and Ukraine.
The crew includes Diana Bancale from Italy, Ayumi Amemiya from Japan, Steven Yalowitz from USA, Pema Chinyam from USA, Jerre Stead from USA, Kateryna Birska and Glib Pyatin from Ukraine.
The influencers and writers will tour Jaffna, Dambulla, Kandy, and Nuwara Eliya before arriving to Colombo and departing thereafter. The itinerary has been meticulously planned and mapped out so that lesser-known attractions of the country are featured. The Tourism Promotion Bureau estimates that the total reach would amass over 1,600,000. Each of them are expected to post daily updates, photographs, posts, articles in multiple platforms such as popular networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram. All of this is being extensively monitored by the Bureau for its reach, viewership and targeted market.
In tandem with the Visiting Blogger program was a special program aimed at foreign travel journalists. Journalists who visited the country on a media familiarisation tour on 26th April included Anastasia Volchenko from Ukraine representing MT Media, Tan Swee Peng from Malaysia representing ICHI Media, Massimo Bisceglie from Italy representing LSD Magazine, Pietro Tarallo from Italy representing Terreincognite and Marco Buemi from Italy representing Vanity Fair L’Espresso Rai Italia.
The journalists were given a tour of Ella, Kataragama, Yala, Galle, Hikkaduwa, Ambalangoda, Bentota and Kandy.
Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau Chairman Kishu Gomes said that the country will collectively bounce back. Although tourists arrivals noted a steep decline of 60-70% immediately after the attacks on Easter, the country still recorded 1700 tourist arrivals per day, according to the SLTPB. “As the Tourism Promotions Bureau of Sri Lanka, we thank the team of bloggers with heartfelt gratitude for voluntarily coming forward to report on the prevailing security situation of the country and redirect attention on the undisturbed tourism value proposition. And we invite other global tourism industry stakeholders to help us with similar activities in order to revive and rebuild the preferred tourism brand 2019, as ranked by many independent organisations,” he added.
