Tourism Minister wants special promo campaign expedited

Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunga has instructed the authorities to expedite the implementation of a special promotion programme targeting five major countries to attract more tourists to Sri Lanka.

Accordingly, these promotions will be carried out in France, Britain, Germany, India and Russia. The minister also instructed the Tourism Promotion Bureau to expedite promotions in addition in Kazakhstan, Ukraine and the Middle East.

The minister gave these instructions during a discussion held at the ministry yesterday with the board of directors and heads of the Tourism Promotion Bureau. The minister further instructed that in addition to the global promotion programme planned to be implemented to attract tourists to Sri Lanka, steps should be taken to implement this special promotion programme.

Accordingly, short-term and long-term promotions will be organised in the coming months targeting tourists in those countries. Under this, special promotion programmes are implemented using travel agents meeting media and social media. The minister instructed to organise face-to-face discussions with Sri Lankan tourism agencies and travel agencies in the relevant countries and take steps to attract tourists to the country.

It was also decided to give wide publicity in these promotions to Sri Lanka as a country that has successfully carried out COVID vaccination.

Ranatunga emphasised that the goal of the Tourism Development Authority should be to attract more tourists to the country within the next two months. 

The minister said that all the activities of the institute should be implemented based on that. The minister also pointed out that it is essential to implement a fresh programme for this through creative ideas.

From January to October 24, 54,768 tourists have visited the country. During the discussion it was revealed that 13,547 tourists had arrived in the country in September and 16,451 tourists had arrived in Sri Lanka from October 1 to date. The tourists have come from India, the UK, Pakistan, Russian Federation, Germany, the Maldives, Canada, France, the USA and Indonesia.