Sri Lanka most potential outbound tourist destination: Beijing Times

Sri Lanka was awarded the prestigious ‘Most potential outbound tourist destination Award’ at the Jinhua Travel New Model Awards ceremony organised by the Beijing Times recently in Beijing.

The Jinhua Travel New Model Awards is the most famous travel branding award in China being organised to recognise the best travel agencies, online travel services, airlines and outbound travel destinations. Beijing Times is a prominent Chinese newspaper with a distribution of over 860,000 and 2.5 million readers around China.The recognition of Sri Lanka as ‘the most potential outbound travel destination’ at the Jinghua Travel Awards is a remarkable achievement for the Sri Lankan tourism promotion campaign in China.

The award will give a major boost to the promotional work of Sri Lanka Missions in China in promoting Sri Lanka as a popular tourist destination among the Chinese public.

Having received the award, Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to China Ranjith Uyangoda, stated that the award reflects the outcome of the vigorous campaign launched by Sri Lanka Missions in China together with the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau and travel agents, to promote Sri Lanka as a tourist destination in China.

He expressed the hope that this award will have a greater impact on the future travel plans of Chinese tourists in selecting Sri Lanka as their travel destination and appealed to the travel agents present at the awards ceremony to work hard towards this end while assuring them that they will receive the best of cooperation from Sri Lankan authorities in this regard.

Ambassador Uyangoda also stated that the online visa system, exemption of the exit pass requirement for Chinese tourists travelling to Sri Lanka, increase in the frequency of Sri Lankan Airlines flights between Sri Lanka and China.  The vigorous Sri Lanka promotion campaign and the active presence of Sri Lanka/Chinese tour operators at road shows and tourism promotional events in China have contributed to the increased Chinese tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka has launched a series of tourism promotional activities in China for 2013, including the visits of Chinese journalists to Sri Lanka for familiarisation tours, a bus advertisement campaign and ‘Get Sri Lankaned’ campaign in the main cities of China targeting the arrival of 275,000 Chinese tourists to Sri Lanka by 2016. At the photograph exhibition held on the sidelines of the Jinghua Travel New Model Awards ceremony a photograph provided by the Embassy of Sri Lanka, depicting Sri Lanka’s cultural diversity was selected as one of the best five photographs which was an added recognition for Sri Lanka.