Sri Lanka Tourism taps high potential Czech Republic market
Thursday, 19 March 2015 00:00
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With the overall tourism numbers in Sri Lanka growing by 11.6% as at end February 2015, identifying the high potential of generating quality tourism numbers to Sri Lanka will be key is the new ethos of the tourism hierarchy.
In this clear strategy, the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau selected a key market in Central European – the Czech Republic – to be the catalyst in driving the quality traveller as predicted by the UNWTO trends of tourism that was announced recently.
With this objective the much acclaimed key travel and tourism fair branded Holiday World Travel Fair staged in Prague was selected to be used to reach Central European segment of business by the Sri Lankan Tourism Promotion Bureau with the industry members, said Chairman Rohantha Athukorala.
“We also want to test Digital marketing in this market where using tools like Trip Advisor analytics we can find the people who have researched Sri Lanka as a tourism destination and how we can track them to be linked to the private sector business. This is the newest form of destination marketing that Sri Lanka is challenged with. We have no option but to move with the global trends as we must note that the world market is very competitive and the company that is closest to the consumer gets the booking,” he said.
A Sri Lanka Tourism contingent was represented by SLTPB Managing Director Milanka Gajanayake and Czech Republic Market Head Jagath Perera. Major travel companies in Sri Lanka like Exotic Holidays International, Deluxe Vacations Ltd., Jetwing Travels and Raffles Leisure Ltd. participated in this year’s show with a single-minded idea on how to convince the people of the Czech Republic to travel to Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan delegation had a hard sell approach to the trade and an absolute consumer end demand, generating discussions with top tour operators of Czech Republic. Some of the discussions centred around commencing charter flights to Sri Lanka whilst some called for continued innovation of new marketing campaigns so that with the direction Sri Lanka will benefit.
The Czech market generates nearly 12,000 tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka annually and has the potential to be 20,000 this year, said Athukorala.
“Holiday World is a unique outlet one can access with all possible features related to the tourism package trips and getting into a valet of a typical traveller where multiple countries are visited like Maldives and Sri Lanka. As the UNWTO Secretary General commented that using all forms of digital communication not only can act on a feedback loop but also develop new elands that can blossom to a strong relationship. The latest trends reveal that there is growth in the number of visitors attending the fair every year and the conversions from sales leads is a good ROI based evaluation that we are in the process of finalising together with the bid proposal.
“Attendees include hospitality and leisure industries with heightened interest by travel trade members, business travel decision makers, leisure and holiday travellers, travel trade members and corporate and business travel decision makers and travel planners. Sri Lanka Tourism’s vision is to develop the Czech Republic Market which will lead to visitor journalist programs and many other creative ways to reach the digital consumer,” commented Athukorala.
