Sri Lanka Tourism spruces up Visiting Journalist Program to promote Sri Lanka in uprising markets

South Korean journalists visit Ceylon Tea Board and take part in Tea Testing Session

 RTBF film crew meet the SLTPB Chairman and PR officials at Tourist Board ​

Onnermark and official photographer from Mat Magazine meet Chef Pabilis at The Mount Lavinia Hotel 

Sri Lanka Tourism’s journalism campaign has shown a tremendous progress within the first five months of the year 2016, by inviting a number of high profile journalists and filming crews from selected inbound markets for destination Sri Lanka. Journalists and media crews arrived from South Korea, France, Belgium, Australia, Sweden, Hong Kong, USA and UK to produce travel articles, documentaries and travelogues about Sri Lanka.  

By representing two popular magazines (Lonely Planet-Korea, The Olive) and The Korea Herald (The only English Newspaper base in South Korea to address co-operate sector and expatriates) four journalists have visited the island in the month of March. The group was exploring the segments such as Ceylon Tea, Heritage, Cuisines, Highlands and exclusive accommodation to promote within their South Korean readers base. Ceylon Tea Board has offered their fullest support during this exercise by offering the experience of Tea Testing. So far for the year 2016, this is the second consecutive media group visited the island from South Korea  to promote Destination Sri Lanka among South Korean travellers. First group from Korean Broadcasting Systems has arrived in the month of January to film a documentary about Sri Lanka and the documentary broadcasted in the month April (9).

From Belgium, Sri Lanka Tourism has invited a media team from Radio Television Belge Francophone (RTBF)-Belgium in the month of February to feature Sri Lanka through their most popular ‘Le Jardin Extraordinaire’ TV Program which is devoted to nature and wildlife. Through this documentary SLTPB expected to increase destination awareness and to promote Sri Lanka as one of the key destinations among the French speaking Belgian tourists. The first episode of the program ‘Radio Television Belge Francophone’ was broadcasted during the month of April.

With a passion for international cuisines, the famous Swedish culinary explorer ‘Maud Onnermark’ from ‘Mat Magasinet’ – Sweden (a popular culinary magazine) has arrived to Sri Lanka during period of early May (1 May to 9 May). Onnermark was in a search authentic Sri Lankan cuisines in different parts of the island. 

During her visit, she met local culinary legend Pabilis Silva at Mount Lavinia Hotel to undertake a food demonstration and to discuss the richness of local food tradition. During the discussion Onnemark stated that, out of the ten million of the current population in Sweden, average one million travel overseas for holiday on annual basis. Within the Asian region, Thailand is one of the leading frequent travel destinations for around 50,000 Swedish travellers every year. However, over the years Thailand is becoming less attractive for Swedish travellers due to the lack of product differentiation. Onnermark further suggested, this will be the perfect timing for Sri Lanka to launch an aggressive media campaign to promote Destination Sri Lanka and authentic Sri Lankan cuisines will be one of those promotional strategies to attract more potential Swedish Travellers.   

Through these media activities, Sri Lanka Tourism expected to increase island awareness among the foreign travellers those seek for exotic paradise destinations. A tropical island blessed with nature, wildlife, heritage and culture, Sri Lanka is truly gifted to receive the limelight from global travel nation. Even base on the feedbacks given by participated foreign media houses the published articles and broadcasted travel documents went on high praise with their audience and readers, solely due to the colourfulness of Sri Lanka.