Sri Lanka Tourism launches global direct marketing campaign

Sri Lanka Tourism has launched a strong direct marketing campaign targeting all foreign tour operators, travel agents and travel journalists in the key markets.

With almost 77% of the travel bookings in the US influenced by Trip Advisor the consumer insight was that having a strong engagement with the key stakeholders that we meet at global travel fairs, exhibitions and road shows abroad is one way to elucidate a top dollar tourist said Sri Lanka Tourism Chairman Rohantha Athukorala. 

“It should not merely be an exchange of business cards and sweet talk but a mutually-beneficial relationship to keep the industry updated on Sri Lanka’s latest events and news,” he said. 

The direct marketing campaign takes the form of an e-bulletin which is circulated once every fortnight and carries either one news article or event detail of Sri Lanka. This is individually sent to a database of approximately 1,500 travel agents and travel journalists.

The first two newsletters have already been sent; the first titled ‘Sri Lanka’s ‘Colombo’ ranked as top fastest growing tourist city of 2015!’ detailing Sri Lanka‘s capital city of Colombo being ranked first by MasterCard traveller with a staggering 21% surge, beating Chengdu, the capital of China’s Sichuan province, following in second Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates ranked third in terms of growth. The article also carried an image of Miss Earth Jamie Harrel who arrived in Sri Lanka soon after the announcement was made. 

The second newsletter was shades of blue, very aptly designed and titled ‘Sri Lanka focus on the $ 2 billion whale watching business’; detailing our latest discovery of 350-500 pod of sperm whales found in the outskirts of Sri Lanka by top British photographer and film maker Andrew Sutton and SLTPB’s plans to promote ecotourism which is an emerging and ever growing market. The third is in the pipeline targeting at sending out to the database the growth of ‘Brand Sri Lanka’ to be worth $ 100 billion by 2017.

“SLTPB has received a number of positive vibes right from the first circular that went out,” said Shenali Gunawardane – Assistant Director for Marketing, as the first news article which was circulated on ‘Sri Lanka’s Colombo’ ranked as top fastest growing tourist city of 2015!’ was published in Khaleej Times in the Middle East. The goal is to pass on information to tour operators and travel agents of Sri Lanka’s new product range so they may market these new experiences in addition to the existing packages.

“We are certain this would create a worldwide buzz in our focused markets so that after a Google search or TripAdvisor search a traveller can be retained in the purchasing process until the purchase is made,” said Dr. Rohantha Athukorala, Chairman, SLTPB.