New era in Sri Lankan tourism begins

Thursday, 17 October 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The program to build 50,000 new hotel rooms to accommodate the 2.5 million tourists who are expected in Sri Lanka by 2016 is now nearing

completion very successfully, ushering in a new era of tourism in this country. Many of these new-style holiday resorts including the four-star Aliya Resort hotel, Sigiriya will be opened in December. Most of the new hotels are located in Kuchchuweli in Trincomalee and Pasikuda in Batticaloa in the vicinity of tourism zones. Sigiriya Aliya Holiday Resort Chairman and well-known hotelier Chandra Wickremasinghe has attributed the success of the program to the initial five-year tourism development plan implemented under Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa’s guidance. The Aliya Holiday Resort has been built on a 22-acre area at a cost of $ 78 million. It will have jobs for 220 unemployed youth of the area and provide 500 others with indirect employment. The hotel will also have an ayurveda centre, an elephant study centre and a paddy museum. The government’s objective is to develop the tourism industry in ways beneficial to all citizens since tourism has become a means of eradicating

poverty in many a developing country, according to Minister Basil Rajapaksa. Over one million tourists visited Sri Lanka last year thus exceeding the target set by the government which is expecting 2.5 million tourists to arrive in the island by 2016. The number of tourists who arrived in the country since January this year is 801,210 which is a 16% increase compared to the corresponding period in 2012. The construction of the 50,000 new hotel rooms will create 500,000 new jobs associated with the tourism industry. The new holiday resorts will increase sources of foreign exchange and by 2016 Sri Lanka is expected to earn nearly $ 3 billion in foreign exchange annually.