Sri Lanka Tourism welcomed a 13-member group from China’s ‘Travel Channel’, at the Bandaranaike International Airport, who arrived here to promote the Island aggressively in China via the Channel starting from January 2014.

‘TheTravelChannel’whichhasanaudience of 650 million Chinese, will use a mix of both programsandcommercialstohelppromoteSri Lanka, which in otherwise would have cost a commercialvalueof Rs.2,800million.

The agreement to start the proposed campaign, an initiative of Minister Basil Rajapaksa was signed between the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau and the Chinese Travel Channel last week. Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau and Sri Lanka Embassy in China Organized this television advertising campaign.

Yan Yi, the Director of The Travel Channel and Rumy Jauffer, Managing Director of the SLTPB, signed the agreement on-behalf of their respective institutions in the presence of MLAM Hizbullah – Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Ren Fanqing, Deputy Ambassador of China in Sri Lanka, Bhashwara Gunarathna Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism and Dr.D.S Jayaweera – Director General of Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority.

With this agreement, the Travel Channel will broadcast 2,500 advertisements spots and over 500 minutes of feature programs and interviews about Sri Lanka during the whole of January 2014. Sri Lanka is the first country the Chinese travel Channel has chosen to provide advertising exposure in year 2014.

Parallelly to that, ‘The Travel Channel’ of China will also distribute the Sri Lankan content via six of its online sites and other social media tools which reaches an audience of nearly 350 million Chinese.

The 13-member TV crew will visit places such as Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Yala, Negombo, Pinnawala, Kandy, Nuwara-Eliya, Rathnapura, Down south and Sigiriya, Pasikudha during their seven day stay in Sri Lanka to film the Island’s tourism attractions.

Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau is arranging the Travel Channel’s tour in Sri Lanka with the support of The Hoteliers Association of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Travel Operators and also the Sri Lankan Airlines. As a national career of Sri Lanka , Sri Lankan Air Lines also get chance to advertise through these programs.

Sri Lanka in recent years has been aggressively promoting the country in the Chinese market. Apart from the Travel Channel promotion campaign, it will also continue with the 3-Day Mega Promotional campaign which will be held in the Chinese city of Shanghai. During the year 2013 a 3-day campaign was conducted in Beijing, while a 200 Buses branding promotional campaign also was carried out in major Chinese cities for a period of six months. Sri Lanka is also planning to take part in five international travel fairs and organize familiarization tours for around 200 foreign journalists and Tour operators during year 2014. China ranks among the top ten countries from which Sri Lanka received the highest number of tourists during year 2013.