Sri Lanka will take one year to recover from the Easter Sunday incident, provided no additional incident takes place. However, the tourism industry needs to be mindful of the impact of elections scheduled for 2019-20, said Dileep Mudadeniya, Vice President of John Keells Holdings.
Furthermore, he stressed the need to formulate a government- led strong recovery marketing plan to revive the industry that took a severe blow following the unfortunate Easter Sunday incident in Sri Lanka.
He made these views at a tourism seminar organized by the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management in Colombo this week.
“To initiate this, we don’t need millions of rupees. And if anyone goes through the case studies of Egypt or any other countries that have faced the similar incidents, you will find that there are so many cost effective solutions to initiate this exercise.” he said.
Noting that Sri Lanka is slightly in an advantage stage as the Easter Sunday incident has happened in the beginning of the off season as far as European travelers are concerned, he said tourism industry has a chance of recovering by this September.
“We already see the early signs; however industry activities can be accelerated once the strong recovery, destination marketing plan is put in place immediately.
He said further that there are some elements that need to be looked as far as the recovery plan is concerned and which will include establishing better security measures, investing in destination marketing activities, providing necessary industry support and so on.
Commenting on the continuous media exposure received for the incident, he said there was no control over it and as a result it created a certain image in the minds of prospective travelers.
“However, over the years, terrorist activities have spread to almost every corner of the world. And soon after this incident, we saw some tourists were coming in. It is something to do with the risk perception and people have seen it differently this time. Also, that’s in the favor of the destination.” he said.
Citing some of the countries that had experienced similar incidents, he said that a destination takes about 13 months to recover from a terrorist attack.
Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB) Chairman Kishu Gomes said, delivering the keynote address at the event cited tourism as the most critical and strategic industry, that will help Sri Lanka to get out of its current crisis situation.
He stressed that Sri Lanka will have major challenges in moving from the current US $ 3,900 per capita income to the desired US $ 7,000 per capital level unless it takes measures to grow tourism revenue from US $ 4.3 billion to US $ 10 billion over the next five years.
He also pointed out that country’s per capita income increase had been only $ 50 on a year-on-year basis over the last three years.
He also expressed confidence that more countries will lift or soften travel advisories imposed on Sri Lanka within the next few days.
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