Srilal Miththapala honoured with THASL Lifetime Achievement Award

Srilal Miththapala  (right) receives the Lifetime Achievement Award from President Ranil Wickremesinghe

The Hotels Association of Sri Lanka (THASL) at its 58th Annual General Meeting honoured Srilal Miththapala with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award 

The award was handed over by President Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Srilal Miththapala is a Chartered Electrical Engineer with a first degree in Electrical Engineering. His initial career was at Richard Pieris & Co Arpico factory, as chief engineer. After a short stint as Electrical Engineer at the State Engineering Department Doha Qatar, he joined the Tourism Industry in 1985 as  General Manager of the 190 room resort Riverina Hotel, Beruwala. Subsequently, he held posts at the Confifi Group 1988-1999 as, Director Operations and Director Business Development. Miththapala acknowledges the late Prof. M T A Furkhan as his mentor, who gave him a break and thrust him into the tourism industry.

In 1999 Miththapala moved to Serendib Leisure Management as CEO where he served for ten years, managing the Serendib, Sigiriya, Reefcomber and Dolphin Resort Hotels. After leaving Serendib Leisure in 2009 he took up the position of Project Manager of the successful EU-SWITCH ASIA Genting Hotels administered by the Chamber of Commerce, 2009-2013. This was the initiative that created awareness in him on the importance of sustainability in the tourism industry. Since then he has been a strong advocate of sustainable tourism, giving numerous lecture presentations, talks and engaged in the training of industry professionals. He received the Green Jobs’ Environment Award 2009 in the category of Climate Change, awarded by the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry to mark World Environment Day.

Miththapala has been a board member of the Sri Lanka Hotel Classification Committee, Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management and the Public Utility Commission Consultative committee  (PUCL).  He was a founder Director of the Rainforest Eco Lodge Sinharaja, and currently serves on the Board of Laugfs Leisure. 

He has been a long standing member of THASL serving as its president (2009/2010).

He has the unique distinction of being perhaps the only person to hold a Fellowship in both the Institute of Hospitality UK and the Institute of Electrical Engineering UK.

Now in his retirement, he engages in various consultancy assignments in Sustainable Tourism Development, Environment and WildLife. Apart from many private sector organisations, he has worked on assignments with the MDF and S4IG (the contracting arms of the Australian DFAT program), YouLead (a contracting arm of USAID), UNDP GEF Project, and GiZ Evolvers Project.  

He was also a lead tourism specialist at the World Bank scoping mission to study the Buddhist Tourism circuit in India and its potential for development.At present he is tourism consultant at The Asian Development Bank in Sri Lanka.

He has served at the Plymouth University of UK, Business School as a visiting guest lecturer.  He also functioned as a lecturer for the Final Year University of Plymouth degree program conducted in Sri Lanka, and has given presentations at Monash University, Sri Lankan Embassy in Canberra and other Sri Lankan Friendship Associations in Australia

He is an avid wildlife and nature lover, with particular fondness for elephants, and a strong advocate for conservation. He contributes articles and papers on Wildlife, Sustainable Tourism and Environment to various magazines, press and academic publications. He served for one year as Zoological Gardens and Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage Advisor.

Amid his regular tourism work he undertook a research project at the Uda Walawe National Park to study the population dynamics of wild elephants. He was also one of the presenters for the very successful SLTDA Couch Safari streaming wildlife program online, during the COVID lockdown.