Provincials get proactive on tourism

Western Province Tourism Board hosts German business delegation on investment

By Uditha Jayasinghe

Riding high on Foreign Direct Investment in tourism, the Western Province Tourism Board will host a delegation of German businessmen including the Mayor of Cologne for a three-day visit.

Western Province Tourism Board Chairman Claude Thomasz told the Daily FT that relations between the German delegates and local officials had been growing since February last year but that this was the first time that a business delegation was arriving to consider investment opportunities in Sri Lanka. They will be arriving in Sri Lanka on 19 June.

During the three-day visit they will be taken to Negombo and Wadduwa to see several sites and will hold talks with various officials to understand the business environment. The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority has also encouraged provincial tourism boards to become more proactive and identify places of interest for tourists.

“The Western Province is the gateway for tourism in Sri Lanka and we are working hard to gain more investment in tourism,” he said, adding that the strong relationship between Germany and Sri Lanka had aided in this process.

The Western Province Tourism Board will only be involved in the initial meetings with the delegates and any serious investors will be referred to the central Tourism Development Board.

Tourism arrivals for 2011 have increased exponentially, registering a 40.2% increase from the previous year. Arrival numbers up to May show that compared to last year’s 233,922, this year 327,902 tourists were recorded.

According to official statistics, German tourists increased by 3.2% in May up from 2,071 to 2,137 in 2011. Overall for the first quarter of the year German tourists have increased by 17.6%, an increase from 19,688 to 23,065.

Sri Lanka has also garnered an inflow of US$ 236 million between January to March, an increase of almost 160% over the same period of 2010, buoyed mostly by large-scale hotel projects such as the US$ 500 million Shagri-la project.