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Sri Lanka tourism hopes British Airways’ return is its ticket to growth
TransportProspective visitors to Sri Lanka may be perturbed by recent revelations that the country’s hotels are being asked to provide police with the passport numbers and visa details of foreign guests. The move might sound Orwellian, but should be seen as a – perhaps overcautious – response to crimes targeting travellers. Khuram Shaikh, a British [...]
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Sri Lanka to start tracking tourists, for “safety reasons”
DestinationsPolice in Sri Lanka have begun tracking tourists’ whereabouts in the country “for their own safety”, officials have said. Hotels and guesthouses have been asked to inform the police of the passport numbers and visa details of all foreigners. “Tourists are important to our economy,” said Buddhika Siriwardena, a police spokesman. “This is to ensure [...]
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Sri Lanka bans land sales to foreigners: There’s goes a villa on Bay of Bengal
DestinationsSri Lanka has decided to ban land sales to foreigners after finding that some offshore investors did not use land and property purchases to benefit the nation’s economy, the government spokesman said on Thursday. The decision comes as the $59 billion economy is struggling to boost foreign direct investment despite gradually stabilizing macroeconomic economic conditions [...]
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Sri Lankan army opens a sea-side resort on site where it committed crimes against humanity
DestinationsA campaign group for human rights has criticised “tasteless” holiday accommodation built on the site of Sri Lanka’s “killing fields”.
The lagoon of Nanthi Kadal, on the island’s north coast, was, in 2009, the scene of atrocities in the Sri Lankan arm…
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The Disneyfication of war tourism in Sri Lanka wrongly represents one region’s unpleasant reality
DestinationsThe tourists have travelled hundreds of kilometers to see this underground bunker, once home to the most feared man in Sri Lanka: the leader of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Prabhakaran… But while these guided tours offer locals a rare glance into the inner workings of the Tigers’ de facto state [...]
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How India is quickly turning into a destination for weekend getaways
DestinationsTraditionally meant for long-haul travelers, India is rapidly turning into a weekend destination and destination for visitors from neighboring countries. Not surprisingly, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh bring in high numbers of visitors to the Indian subcontinent. Visits are short and more frequent in nature, and not necessarily restricted to winter months. Among the many factors [...]
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Sri Lankan campaign group asks tourists to avoid booking with ‘unethical’ tour operators
DestinationsTour operators have been accused of offering unethical package holidays to Sri Lanka by a human rights pressure group. The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice claims certain hotels, airlines and attractions around the country – including a number of wildlife sanctuaries – have political or financial links to the alleged perpetrators of human [...]
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Sri Lanka’s post-war tourism offensive includes 99 year leases for resorts
DestinationsSri Lanka’s tourist development agency has offered islets, hundreds of acres of land bordering beaches, a wildlife reserve and a wetland on 99-year leases to build tourism related projects. This will be offered to foreign developers. Among them, eight islets in Kalpitiya off the western coast of Sri Lanka, 150 kilometres north of the capital [...]
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Post-war Sri Lanka’s tourism boom, for war artifacts
DestinationsToday triumphalism abounds among Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhala population. The army found the pool in 2009, drained it, then invited tourists in. Now they come by the thousands. At nearby Vallipunam, tourists view the torture chambers with their smelly, open latrines, and walls on which inmates scratched poignant notes, many of them expressing faith in [...]
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Oneworld airline alliance gets one bigger with the addition of Sri Lankan Air
Transportaviator.aero – @Aviator_Aero SriLankan Airlines to join oneworld alliance http://t.co/DMeXFzeG
