The Colombo International Airport will soon see a reduction of landing charges, said Minister of Christian Affairs and Tourism John Amaratunge.
Speaking at the special press conference with some of the leading stakeholders of the industry yesterday the Minister said that this is mainly to bring the Colombo airport charges in line with other neighbouring airports and also woo more airlines to fly to Colombo.
The Minister also said that the Ampara airport too would be opened very soon as a domestic airport and they are working to add more facilities to the Ratmalana airport.
“We are currently having some minor issues with the Air Force and they would be ironed out soon and these are being done to mainly promote domestic airlines to operate in Sri Lanka,” he said.
Commenting on the Sri Lanka tourism sector in the aftermath of the Kandy incident, emergency and adverse travel advisories, he said that there was no a major negative impact from it to the industry.
The industry after going through a drop is now showing a 20% growth and this trend is expected to continue.
“With this trend we estimate that we will be able to achieve over 2.5 million arrivals.”
The industry saw US$ 3.5 billion revenue and Sri Lanka also hopes to better it to US$ 3.8 billion by end of 2018.
Chandana Perera (Emirates) representing the airline sector said that there were some pax cancellations from the Gulf but there were no flight cancellations. He Minister said that steps were taken to deduce the impact of the incident and allowing foreigners to travel by producing their passports as curfew passes during curfew time was one such move.
However, when ‘Daily News Business ‘asked about a helpline number to be used by tourists during a crisis none of the officials in the head table knew about it. It was later announced that the helpline number is 1992.
Managing Director, Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau Sutheash Balasubramaniam said that they will now launch an aggressive marketing campaign especially in the forth coming Arabian Travel Mart in Dubai, Chinese Travel show and future road shows.
“We will allocate USS 650, 000 for promotions with CNN and a further US$ 35 million for future digital destination promotions.”
In addition he said that a Rs. 6 billion promotional campaign is now on for a period of three years.
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