Sri Lankan tourism has the potential to attract more Australians providing a wide array of entertainment than Bali, one of the leading tour operators of Australia, TripaDeal said during a visit to the country to promote the destination following the Easter Sunday bombings.
However, the absence of a direct flight from Sri Lanka to Sydney disrupts this. “We are very pleased with the commencement of a direct flight in between Colombo and Melbourne, but the biggest opportunity lies in opening up a direct flight in between Colombo and Sydney,” said CEO, TripaDeal, Norm Black.
He also said that through this trip they are going to discuss with the national carrier to commence a direct flight in between Colombo and Sydney since the Lankan leisure market totally depends on it. “We also had a discussion with the Minister of Tourism and he was very pleased and supportive with our intentions in promoting the destination and we want the Sri Lankan government and the responsible authorities to help us with this,” he said. Black further said that the Australian travel market has the potential to bring around 250,000 Australians to Sri Lanka which has some of the finest food, beaches, locations for surfing, adventures and above all the warm hospitality of its people and they want to spread the message that Sri Lanka is a safe country to visit among the Australians. “If there is right air connectivity, then our company alone could generate about 20,000 clients within a period of two years,” he added.
Meanwhile, Chairman, Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB), Kishu Gomes, said that the Australian market is strategically important for Sri Lanka in term of reviving the industry. Last year there had been 138,000 Aussie tourists where the growth rate had been more than 30%. “This was much higher than the average growth rate of 2018 which is 10.2%,” he said.
Commencing operations in Sri Lanka three years back, the Brisbon based tour operator, TripaDeal had rapidly increased its number of clients to Sri Lanka year on year. During their first year of operation they were able to send 250 clients followed by 3000 and 5500 clients in their second and third year respectively. Their expectation for this year had been to generate 10,000 clients which had a temporary setback followed by the April 21 disaster. However according to the officials of TripaDeal they had to wait only one month without any clients to Sri Lanka and at present their number of clients are rapidly increasing.
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